Joint Species Distribution Models

Update : The paper is now available (free) from Methods in Ecology and Evolution .

Species might tend to occur together, or they might tend to occur apart. Factors driving these patterns can include environmental variables or species interactions. Species distribution models can predict the probability of occurrence of species, but they rarely account for the joint occurrence of multiple species.

I had been working on this idea of modelling co-occurrence with Kirsten Parris using her frog data, and also with Laura Pollock and Peter Vesk using Laura’s eucalypt occurrence data. We were aiming to model co-occurrence within species distribution models. Well, it has taken a few years to figure out (to be precise, it took a few years to find out that someone else had figured it out), but we now have species distribution models that account for the joint occurrence of species.

To help understand what we are…