Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Statistical Models
Sunlight and diel behaviors promote coexistence of frogs through temporal acoustic partitioning
Published: 2024-08-12
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Understanding how species coexist is one of the main goals in ecology. While many have documented how species coexist in nature, there is much interspecific and spatial heterogeneity in which resources are partitioned and in the contributing environmental factors. Overall, we lack a general understanding of how stable coexistence is maintained for particular groups of organisms. Thus, we studied [...]
Three Paths Through the Levels of Selection
Published: 2024-08-08
Subjects: Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Evolution, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Statistical Models, Zoology
An integrated population modelling workflow for supporting mesopredator management
Published: 2024-08-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Natural Resources and Conservation, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Survival Analysis, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Zoology
Expanding populations of mesopredators threaten biodiversity and human health in many ecosystems across the world. Lethal control through harvest is commonly implemented as a mitigation measure, yet the effects of harvest and its interaction with environmental conditions on mesopredator population dynamics have rarely been assessed quantitatively due to data constraints. Recent advances [...]
Large-scale spatio-temporal variation in vital rates and population dynamics of an alpine bird
Published: 2024-02-01
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Population Biology, Statistical Models
Quantifying temporal and spatial variation in animal population size and demography is a central theme in ecological research and important for directing management and policy. However, this requires field sampling at large spatial extents and over long periods of time, which is not only prohibitively costly but often politically untenable. Participatory monitoring programs (also called citizen [...]
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: 2023-10-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Biostatistics, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Monitoring, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Spatial patterns in population trends, particularly those at fine geographic scales, can help 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 changes in relative abundance through time (trend) within broad geographic strata, such as countries, Bird Conservation [...]
Towards causal relationships for modelling species distribution
Published: 2023-10-14
Subjects: Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Statistical Models
1. Understanding the processes underlying the distribution of species through space and time is fundamental in several research fields spanning from ecology to spatial epidemiology. Correlative species distribution models (SDMs) involve popular statistical tools to infer species geographical distribution thanks to spatiotemporally explicit observations of species occurrences coupled with a set of [...]
Improving ecological connectivity assessments with transfer learning and function approximation
Published: 2023-05-04
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Environmental Monitoring, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models, Sustainability
This is a conference paper presented at the ICLR 2023 "Machine Learning for Remote Sensing" workshop. Protecting and restoring ecological connectivity is essential to climate change adaptation, and necessary if species are to shift their geographic distributions to track their suitable climatic conditions over the coming century. Despite the increasing availability of near real-time and high [...]
Beyond single-species models: leveraging multispecies forecasts to navigate the dynamics of ecological predictability
Published: 2023-03-13
Subjects: Desert Ecology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Multivariate Analysis, Population Biology, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
Forecasting the responses of natural populations to environmental change is a key priority in the management of ecological systems. This is challenging because the dynamics of multispecies ecological communities are influenced by many factors. Populations can exhibit complex, nonlinear responses to environmental change, often over multiple temporal lags. In addition, biotic interactions, and [...]
A probabilistic approach to estimating timber harvest location
Published: 2023-02-22
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 [...]
The impact of rising temperatures on the prevalence of coral diseases and its predictability: a global meta-analysis
Published: 2023-01-24
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Immunology and Infectious Disease, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Statistical Models
Coral reefs are under threat from disease as climate change alters environmental conditions. Rising temperatures exacerbate coral disease, but this relationship is likely complex as other factors also influence coral disease prevalence. To better understand this relationship, we meta-analytically examined 108 studies for changes in global coral disease over time alongside temperature, expressed [...]
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: 2022-04-21
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 [...]
Phylogenetic multilevel meta-analysis: A simulation study on the importance of modeling the phylogeny
Published: 2020-11-23
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Models, Statistics and Probability
1. Meta-analyses in ecology and evolution require special attention due to certain study characteristics in these fields. First, the primary articles in these fields usually report results that are observed from studies conducted with different species, and the phylogeny among the species violates the independence assumption. Second, articles frequently allow the computation of multiple effect [...]