Bayesian clustering of spatially distributed compositional data with application to the Great Barrier Reef.

ABSTRACT: The relative abundance of groups of species is often used in ecological surveys to estimate community composition, a metric that reflects patterns of commonness and rarity of biological assemblages. The focus of this paper is measurements of the abundances of four benthic groups (that live on the seafloor) at several reefs on Australia's Great Barrier Reef (GBR) gathered between 2012 and 2017. In this paper we develop a statistical model to find clusters of locations with similar composition. We examine the changes in clusters during a period impacted by an unprecedented sequence of extreme environmental disturbances. To achieve this, we propose a model that incorporates the geographical location of the data, accounting for the possibility that nearby reefs are similar in composition. This

SUBMITTER: Piancastelli L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11436991 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature