Table 2.

Outlying Marginality Index (OMI) axes and their interpretation (details in Appendix 3). The general relationship to the environmental variables used in the analysis are provided by category, then an overall interpretation of each axis is given, as well as the corresponding % variance explained by each axis.

	OMI1	OMI2
Temperature	Strong negative relationship to temperature.	Negative relationship to temperature during the wettest season, but positive relationship to temperature during the driest quarter.
Precipitation	Strong positive relationship to precipitation throughout the year, and negative relationship to precipitation seasonality.	Negative relationship to precipitation during the warmest and wettest seasons and precipitation seasonality, but positive relationship to precipitation during the driest and coldest seasons.
Altitude	Strong positive relationship with altitudinal heterogeneity.	Strong positive relationship to altitudinal heterogeneity.
Land use	Positive relationship to % urban and mixed crop-natural vegetation, forests and savannas, and vegetation productivity index; negative relationships to open shrubland and barren ground.	Strong negative relationships to % grassland, negative relation to % urban, and positive to % open shrubland.
Interpretation for high values on each axis.	Cold and humid environments, habitats topographically heterogeneous, dominated by mixed crop-natural vegetation with little open habitat and high productivity.	Seasonal environments, with a wet colder season and a dry warmer season, often dominated by open shrublands.
% Explained	74.6%	15.6%