Here is the methods digest update for June 2010 – do let me know if there is anything that you think I should feature.

In Oikos Novak & Wooton have a paper on using indices to quantify the effects of comeptition and Landau & Ryan present new ‘null model tests for presence-absence data’ (NMTPAs).

A paper in Conservation Letters by Michael Kearney et al. evaluates species distribution models by comparing the output of correlative and mechanistic models.

In the Journal of Ecology the debate about how to measure the intensity and importance of competition continues to rage. Walker et al. also review the use of chronosequences in studies of succession. Hautier et al. look at how to model the growth of parasitic plants (see also the editorial commentary by Mark Rees).

In the current issue of Systematic Biology, Susana Magallón applies a method using fossils to break long branches to molecular dating of the angiosperm phylogeny. Carstens & Dewey have a new method for species delimitation. Haartman et al. have a paper on sampling trees from evolutionary models.Towsend & Lopez-Giraldez look at the optimal selection of gene and ingroup taxon sampling for resolving phylogenetic relationships.

Salvador Pueyo et al. in Ecology Letters look at the problem of testing for criticality in ecosystem dynamics. Kuhnert et al. review the use of expert knowledge in Bayesian modelling.

In the latest issue of Ecology Bailey et al. look at estimation in multistate models with unobservable states. Mérigot et al. look at goodness of fit measures for dendrogram analyses.

Hines et al in Ecological Applications present a new approach for occupancy modelling for cluster sampling. In the same issue Waddle et al. present a new approach for estimating co-occurrence of interacting species.

Finally, in the American Naturalist Hamilton et al. look at the problem of estimating the uncertainty in estimates of species richness, and Solow & Smith look at how to estimate abundance from occupancy.