Biogeographic multi-species occupancy models for large-scale survey data.

ABSTRACT: Ecologists often seek to infer patterns of species occurrence or community structure from survey data. Hierarchical models, including multi-species occupancy models (MSOMs), can improve inference by pooling information across multiple species via random effects. Originally developed for local-scale survey data, MSOMs are increasingly applied to larger spatial scales that transcend major abiotic gradients and dispersal barriers. At biogeographic scales, the benefits of partial pooling in MSOMs trade off against the difficulty of incorporating sufficiently complex spatial effects to account for biogeographic variation in occupancy across multiple species simultaneously. We show how this challenge can be overcome by incorporating preexisting range information into MSOMs, yielding a "biogeogra

SUBMITTER: Socolar JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9526027 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature