Random Forest habitat suitability modeling for Acanthurus spp. in Philippine coral reefs: environmental drivers and climate projections

Surgeonfish of the genus Acanthurus (family Acanthuridae) are ecologically pivotal herbivores on Indo-Pacific coral reefs, yet their habitat requirements and distributional responses to environmental gradients and climate change remain poorly characterized in the Philippines. A Random Forest (RF) machine learning framework was used to model habitat suitability for six commercially and ecologically…