This is a Preprint and has not been peer reviewed. This is version 4 of this Preprint.
One Toolbox, Many Tools: A Practitioner’s Guide to Model-based Ordination for Community Ecology
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Authors
Audun Rugstad 
,
Bob O'Hara ,
Bert van der Veen,
Anne Catriona Mehlhoop
Abstract
This article presents the case for model-based ordination by way of Generalized Linear Latent Variable Models (GLLVMs) as a go-to choice of statistical method for any community ecologist wanting to tackle a range of present-day ecological research questions. Model-based ordination brings tools and capabilities from classic (mixed-effects) regression models to multivariate community analysis, providing a number of novel ways to tailor models specifically to one's study questions and data properties not available when using non-model-based multivariate methods. In order to facilitate further adoption of these methods by community ecologists, we provide 1) a practitioner-focused and practical overview of the advantages model-based ordination brings to the table when addressing different core ecological questions, 2) a number of concrete suggestions for how model-based ordination best can be incorporated into the analytical workflow of community ecologists, and 3) two illustrative worked examples of this workflow in action on real-world data.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2KM2V
Subjects
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Multivariate Analysis, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models
Keywords
Community ecology, Ordination, Data exploration, Model selection, Model-based workflow, Invasive species, Ecological restoration, Latent variable models, Multispecies models, Community modelling
Dates
Published: 2026-02-05 10:53
Last Updated: 2026-08-03 03:42
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License
CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Data and Code Availability Statement:
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available on Zenodo, at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18391448.
Language:
English
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