Joint Species Distribution Model with Imperfect Detection

You are welcome to attend the following Statistics and Stochastic colloquium (part of the Colloquium Series of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics) at La Trobe University.

Joint species distribution models (JSDMs) are a recent development in biogeography and enable the spatial modelling of multiple species and their interactions and dependencies.  However, most models do not consider imperfect detection, which can significantly bias estimates.  A multivariate hierarchical probit JSDM was proposed that includes explicit modelling of imperfect detection.  A Bayesian approach has been employed for model estimation. This is one of the first studies to account for imperfect detection when fitting data with JSDMs and study the complications that may arise. We investigate how imperfect detection affects estimates of occupancy and correlation parameters under a range of environmental conditions. The model is also applied to a case study of owls and gliders in South East Australia.