Joint Species Distribution Modelling

Otso Ovaskainen is Professor of Mathematical Ecology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He has published 170 papers in mathematical, statistical and empirical ecology, with a particular focus on metapopulation ecology, movement ecology, population genetics, molecular species identification and community ecology. Nerea Abrego is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. After obtaining her Ph.D. in fungal ecology, she expanded her research to genera community ecology. She has published thirty papers, many of which relate to recent developments in joint species distribution modelling.

• Part I. Introduction to Community Ecology: Theory and Methods: 1. Historical development of community ecology; 2. Typical data collected by community ecologists; 3. Typical statistical methods applied by community ecologists; 4. An overview of the structure and use of HMSC; Part II. Building a Joint Species Distribution Model Step by Step: 5. Single-species distribution modelling; 6. Joint species distribution modelling: variation in species niches; 7. Joint species distribution modelling: biotic interactions; 8. Bayesian inference in HMSC; 9. Evaluating model fit and selecting among multiple models; Part III. Applications and Perspectives: 10. Linking HMSC back to community assembly processes; 11. Illustration of HMSC analyses: case study of Finnish birds; 12. Conclusions and future directions; Epilogue; Index; References.

'The authors provide a perfect blend of ecological and statistical insight into joint species distribution modeling. This book is an excellent resource for any quantitative ecologist or ecological statistician.' Erin M. Schliep, The Quarterly Review of Biology