Related papers: Modeling large scale species abundance with latent…

We investigate spatial confounding in the presence of multivariate disease dependence. In the "analysis model perspective" of spatial confounding, adding a spatially dependent random effect can lead to significant variance inflation of the…

Models of invasive species spread often assume that landscapes are spatially homogeneous; thus simplifying analysis but potentially reducing accuracy. We extend a recently developed partial differential equation model for invasive conifer…

Both evolution and ecology have long been concerned with the impact of variable environmental conditions on observed levels of genetic diversity within and between species. We model the evolution of a quantitative trait under selection that…

Producing reliable estimates of health and demographic indicators at fine areal scales is crucial for examining heterogeneity and supporting localized health policy. However, many surveys release outcomes only at coarser administrative…

Two-stage hierarchical models have been widely used in small area estimation to produce indirect estimates of areal means. When the areas are treated exchangeably and the model parameters are assumed to be the same over all areas, we might…

Machine learning (ML) approaches are used more and more widely in biodiversity monitoring. In particular, an important application is the problem of predicting biodiversity indicators such as species abundance, species occurrence or species…

National Forest Inventories (NFIs) provide statistically reliable information on forest resources at national and other large spatial scales. As forest management and conservation needs become increasingly complex, NFIs are being called…

One advantage of decision tree based methods like random forests is their ability to natively handle categorical predictors without having to first transform them (e.g., by using feature engineering techniques). However, in this paper, we…

In populations competing for resources, it is natural to ask whether consuming fewer resources provides any selective advantage. To answer this question, we propose a Wright- Fisher model with two types of individuals: the inefficient…

Studies on distribution, abundance and diversity of species revealed fascinating universalities in macroecology. Many of these patterns, like the species-area and range-abundance relationship or the year-to-year fluctuations in population…

The behavior of ecological systems mainly relies on the interactions between the species it involves. We consider the problem of inferring the species interaction network from abundance data. To be relevant, any network inference…

Quantitative predictions about the processes that promote species coexistence are a subject of active research in ecology. In particular, competitive interactions are known to shape and maintain ecological communities, and situations where…

Spatial maps of extreme precipitation are crucial in flood protection. With the aim of producing maps of precipitation return levels, we propose a novel approach to model a collection of spatially distributed time series where the…

Latent variable models for network data extract a summary of the relational structure underlying an observed network. The simplest possible models subdivide nodes of the network into clusters; the probability of a link between any two nodes…

Biases in large-scale image datasets are known to influence the performance of computer vision models as a function of geographic context. To investigate the limitations of standard Internet data collection methods in low- and middle-income…

This work investigates how biodiversity is affected in a cyclic spatial May-Leonard model with hierarchical and non-hierarchical rules. Here we propose a generalization of the traditional rock-paper-scissors model by considering highly…

Reductions in natural habitats urge that we better understand species' interconnection and how biological communities respond to environmental changes. However, ecological studies of species' interactions are limited by their geographic and…

Having a precise knowledge of the dispersal ability of a population in a heterogeneous environment is of critical importance in agroecology and conservation biology as it can provide management tools to limit the effects of pests or to…

In this paper we consider a microscopic model of a simple ecosystem. The basic ingredients of this model are individuals, and both the phenotypic and genotypic levels are taken in account. The model is based on a long range cellular…

The general tendency for species number (S) to increase with sampled area (A) constitutes one of the most robust empirical laws of ecology, quantified by species-area relationships (SAR). In many ecosystems, SAR curves display a power-law…