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Co-occurrence Networks do not Support Identification of Biotic Interactions
Peterson, A. Townsend Soberón, Jorge Ramsey, Janine Osorio-Olvera, Luis
Peterson, A. Townsend
Soberón, Jorge
Ramsey, Janine
Osorio-Olvera, Luis
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Abstract
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.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Date
2020-01-31
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University of Kansas