Related papers: Not even wrong: Reply to Wagg et al
The Loreau and Hector (2019) Comment on our paper (Pillai and Gouhier, 2019) failed to address the two core elements of our critique, both the circularity of the BEF research program, in general, and the mathematical flaws of the…
In biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) research, the Loreau-Hector (LH) statistical scheme is widely-used to partition the effect of biodiversity on ecosystem properties into a "complementarity effect" and a "selection effect".…
Resolving the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning has been one of the central goals of modern ecology. Early debates about the relationship were finally resolved with the advent of a statistical partitioning scheme…
Ecological models traditionally explain stability and coexistence through pairwise interactions among species. These interactions can also involve groups of three or more species, higher-order interactions, which recent theory suggests can…
Algorithmic monoculture arises when many decision-makers rely on the same algorithm to evaluate applicants. An emerging body of work investigates possible harms of this kind of homogeneity, but has been limited by the challenge of…
Researchers continue to be interested in exploring the effects that covariates have on the heterogeneity in trajectories. The inclusion of covariates associated with latent classes allows for a more clear understanding of individual…
Mixed-effects models have emerged as the gold standard of statistical analysis in different sub-fields of linguistics (Baayen, Davidson & Bates, 2008; Johnson, 2009; Barr, et al, 2013; Gries, 2015). One problematic feature of these models…
We demonstrate that the conclusions drawn by Lefcheck et al. (2019) regarding the positive effects of fish diversity on coral reef ecosystem functioning across scales are flawed because of a series of conceptual and statistical issues that…
Since the foundations of Population Genetics the notion of genetic equilibrium (in close analogy to Classical Mechanics) has been associated to the Hardy-Weinberg (HW) Principle and the identification of equilibrium is currently assumed by…
Most biomolecules occur in mirror, or chiral, images of each other. However, life is homochiral: proteins contain almost exclusively levorotatory (L) amino acids, while only dextrorotatory (R) sugars appear in RNA and DNA. The mechanism…
The relationship between the dynamics of a community and its constituent pairwise interactions is a fundamental problem in ecology. Higher-order ecological effects beyond pairwise interactions may be key to complex ecosystems, but…
We study some properties of a multi-species degenerate Ginzburg-Landau energy and its relation to a cross-diffusion Cahn-Hilliard system. The model is motivated by multicomponent mixtures where crossdiffusion effects between the different…
We consider a system of $N$ individuals consisting of $S$ species that interact pairwise: $x_m+x_\ell \rightarrow 2x_m\,\,$ with arbitrary probabilities $p_m^\ell $. With no spatial structure, the master equation yields a simple set of rate…
We demonstrate how niche theory and Hubbell's original formulation of neutral theory can be blended together into a general framework modeling the combined effects of selection, drift, speciation, and dispersal on community dynamics. This…
We find it absurd that Walliser [1] essentially used the same analysis and obtained identical results as reported in [3], yet arrived at different conclusions. Namely, based on an incomplete theory and using erroneous arguments, he not only…
Latent variables may lead to spurious relationships that can be misinterpreted as causal relationships. In Bayesian Networks (BNs), this challenge is known as learning under causal insufficiency. Structure learning algorithms that assume…
In our original paper (Delavaux et al. 2024; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07110-y), we find that the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) in plant species richness is reduced on oceanic islands worldwide. Moreover, we find…
The presence of one or more species at some spatial locations but not others is a central matter in ecology. This phenomenon is related to ecological pattern formation. Nonlocal interactions can be considered as one of the mechanisms…
This article focuses on Bayesian estimation of a hierarchical linear model (HLM) from incomplete data assumed missing at random where continuous covariates C and discrete categorical covariates $D$ have interaction effects on a continuous…
Traditionally, spline or kernel approaches in combination with parametric estimation are used to infer the linear coefficient (fixed effects) in a partially linear mixed-effects model for repeated measurements. Using machine learning…