Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Statistical Methodology
Quantifying intermediary processes in ecology using causal mediation analyses
Published: 2024-05-13
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Methodology
Ecologists seek to understand the intermediary ecological processes through which changes in one attribute in a system affect other attributes. Yet, quantifying the causal effects of these mediating processes in ecological systems is challenging. Researchers must define what they mean by a “mediated effect”, determine what assumptions are required to estimate mediation effects without bias, and [...]
A big data and machine learning approach for monitoring the condition of ecosystems
Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystems are highly valuable as a source of goods and services and as a heritage for future generations. Knowing their condition is extremely important for all management and conservation activities and public policies. Until now, the evaluation of ecosystem condition has been unsatisfactory and thus lacks practical implementation for most countries. We propose that ecosystem integrity is a [...]
Patterns and drivers of population trends on individual Breeding Bird Survey routes using spatially explicit models and route-level covariates
Published: 2023-10-28
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Spatial patterns in population trends, particularly those at finer geographic scales, can help us better understand the factors driving population change in North American birds. The standard trend models for the North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) were designed to estimate trends within broad geographic strata, such as countries, Bird Conservation Regions, U.S. states, and Canadian [...]
Multi-species dependencies improve forecasts of population dynamics in a long-term monitoring study
Published: 2023-03-14
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Multivariate Analysis, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Forecasts of community dynamics are essential for the management of biodiversity. Theory suggests these predictions can be improved by leveraging multi-species dependencies to improve models, but empirical support for this is lacking. We test whether models that learn from multiple species, both to estimate nonlinear environmental effects and temporal dependence, improve forecasts for a semi-arid [...]
A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location
Published: 2023-02-23
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Forest Management, Other Forestry and Forest Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Determining the harvest location of timber is crucial to enforcing international regulations designed to protect natural resources and to tackle illegal logging and associated trade in forest products. Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis (SIRA) can be used to verify claims of timber harvest location by matching levels of naturally-occurring stable isotopes within wood tissue to location-specific ratios [...]
Assessing species interactions using integrated predator-prey models
Published: 2022-12-16
Subjects: Biostatistics, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Inferring the strength of species interactions from demographic data is a challenging task. The Integrated Population Modelling (IPM) approach, bringing together population counts, capture-recapture, and individual-level fecundity data into a unified model framework, has been extended from single species to the community level. This allows to specify IPMs for multiple species with interactions [...]
Decline effects are rare in ecology: Comment
Published: 2022-06-06
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Recently, Costello and Fox (2022) tested, with a large dataset, the hypothesis of whether there is a widespread decline effect in the discipline of ecology. In other words, the magnitude of the reported ecological effect sizes declines over time (Leimu and Koricheva 2004). Contrary to early results from much smaller datasets (Jennions and Møller 2002, Barto and Rillig 2012), Costello and Fox [...]
Multi-population analysis reveals spatial consistency in drivers of population dynamics of a declining migratory bird
Published: 2022-04-22
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biology, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Population Biology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Many migratory species are in decline across their geographical ranges. Single-population studies can provide important insights into drivers at a local scale, but effective conservation requires multi-population perspectives. This is challenging because relevant data are often hard to consolidate, and state-of-the-art analytical tools are typically tailored to specific datasets. We capitalized [...]