Species distribution modelling through Bayesian hierarchical approach

Abstract

Usually in Ecology, the availability and quality of the data is not as good as we would like. For some species, the typical environmental study focuses on presence/absence data, and particularly with small animals as amphibians and reptiles, the number of presences can be rather small. The aim of this study is to develop a spatial model for studying animal data with a low level of presences; we specify a Gaussian Markov Random Field for modelling the spatial component and evaluate the inclusion of environmental covariates. To assess the model suitability, we use Watanabe-Akaike information criteria (WAIC) and the conditional predictive ordinate (CPO). We apply this framework to model each species of amphibian and reptiles present in the Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Spain).