Related papers: Inference for changes in biodiversity

Linear model prediction with a large number of potential predictors is both statistically and computationally challenging. The traditional approaches are largely based on shrinkage selection/estimation methods, which are applicable even…

This paper addresses patient heterogeneity associated with prediction problems in biomedical applications. We propose a systematic hypothesis testing approach to determine the existence of patient subgroup structure and the number of…

I introduce heterogeneity into the analysis of peer effects that arise from conformity, allowing the strength of the taste for conformity to vary across agents' actions. Using a structural model based on a simultaneous network game with…

Background: Pairwise and network meta-analyses using fixed effect and random effects models are commonly applied to synthesise evidence from randomised controlled trials. The models differ in their assumptions and the interpretation of the…

Species interactions (ranging from direct predator prey relationships to indirect effects mediated by the environment) are central to ecosystem balance and biodiversity. While empirical methods for measuring these interactions exist, their…

We provide an inferential framework to assess variable importance for heterogeneous treatment effects. This assessment is especially useful in high-risk domains such as medicine, where decision makers hesitate to rely on black-box treatment…

We propose a truncation model for abundance distribution in the species richness estimation. This model is inherently semiparametric and incorporates an unknown truncation threshold between rare and abundant counts observations. Using the…

Large-scale data are often characterized by some degree of inhomogeneity as data are either recorded in different time regimes or taken from multiple sources. We look at regression models and the effect of randomly changing coefficients,…

We suggest a natural approach that leads to a modification of classical quasispecies models and incorporates the possibility of population extinction in addition to growth. The resulting modified models are called open. Their essential…

Scientific studies in the last two decades have established the central role of the microbiome in disease and health. Differential abundance analysis seeks to identify microbial taxa associated with sample groups defined by a factor such as…

Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes --operating at separate timescales-- even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field…

We propose a model of multispecies populations surviving on distributed resources. System dynamics are investigated under changes in abiotic factors such as the climate, as parameterized through environmental temperature. In particular, we…

Biological organisms have to cope with stochastic variations in both the external environment and the internal population dynamics. Theoretical studies and laboratory experiments suggest that population diversification could be an effective…

Inferring microbial interaction networks from abundance patterns is an important approach to advance our understanding of microbial communities in general and the human microbiome in particular. Here we suggest discriminating two levels of…

Intraspecific trait variation has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in determining species interaction and diversity. Eco-evolutionary models have studied the distribution of trait values within a population that changes…

Heterogeneous data from multiple populations, sub-groups, or sources is often represented as a ``mixture model'' with a single latent class influencing all of the observed covariates. Heterogeneity can be resolved at multiple levels by…

Cohort studies employ pairwise measures of association to quantify dependencies among conditions and exposures. To reliably use these measures to draw conclusions about the underlying association strengths requires that the measures be…

Researchers often have to deal with heterogeneous population with mixed regression relationships, increasingly so in the era of data explosion. In such problems, when there are many candidate predictors, it is not only of interest to…

Stochastic phenotype switching has been suggested to play a beneficial role in microbial populations by leading to the division of labour among cells, or ensuring that at least some of the population survives an unexpected change in…

The \emph{community}, the assemblage of organisms co-existing in a given space and time, has the potential to become one of the unifying concepts of biology, especially with the advent of high-throughput sequencing experiments that reveal…