Co-occurrence Networks do not Support Identification of Biotic Interactions

We assess a body of work that has attempted to use co-occurrence networks to infer the existence and type of biotic interactions between species. Although we see considerable interest in the approach as an exploratory tool for understanding patterns of co-occurrence of species, we note and describe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inBiodiversity informatics Vol. 15; no. 1; pp. 1 - 10
Main Authors Peterson, A. Townsend, Soberón, Jorge, Ramsey, Janine, Osorio-Olvera, Luis
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Lawrence University of Kansas, Informatics Biodiversity Research Center 01.01.2020
Subjects
Life history
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:We assess a body of work that has attempted to use co-occurrence networks to infer the existence and type of biotic interactions between species. Although we see considerable interest in the approach as an exploratory tool for understanding patterns of co-occurrence of species, we note and describe numerous problems in the step of inferring biotic interactions from the co-occurrence patterns. These problems are both theoretical and empirical in nature, and limit confidence in inferences about interactions rather severely. We examine a series of examples that demonstrates striking discords between interactions inferred from co-occurrence patterns and previous experimental results and known life-history details.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:1546-9735
1546-9735
DOI:10.17161/bi.v15i1.9798