Florian Hartig Theoretical Ecology & Ecological Data Science

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Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: ten questions to guide interpretation and avoid false conclusions

Carsten F. Dormann, Maria Bobrowski, D. Matthias Dehling, David J. Harris, Florian Hartig, Heike Lischke, Marco D. Moretti, Jörn Pagel, Stefan Pinkert, Matthias Schleuning, Susanne I. Schmidt, Christine S. Sheppard, Manuel J. Steinbauer, Dirk Zeuss, Casper Kraan

Global Ecology and Biogeography, 27(9), 1004–1016 (2018)
Cite this
@article{dormann2018biotic,
  author = {Carsten F. Dormann and Maria Bobrowski and D. Matthias Dehling and David J. Harris and Florian Hartig and Heike Lischke and Marco D. Moretti and Jörn Pagel and Stefan Pinkert and Matthias Schleuning and Susanne I. Schmidt and Christine S. Sheppard and Manuel J. Steinbauer and Dirk Zeuss and Casper Kraan},
  title = {Biotic interactions in species distribution modelling: ten questions to guide interpretation and avoid false conclusions},
  journal = {Global Ecology and Biogeography},
  volume = {27},
  number = {9},
  pages = {1004–1016},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1111/geb.12759},
}

DOI: 10.1111/geb.12759
Cited by 352 (Google Scholar) · 339 (OpenAlex), as of 07 September 2026

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Abstract

Recent studies increasingly use statistical methods to infer biotic interactions from co-occurrence information at a large spatial scale. However, disentangling biotic interactions from other factors that can affect co-occurrence patterns at the macroscale is a major challenge. We present a set of questions that analysts and reviewers should ask to avoid erroneously attributing species association patterns to biotic interactions, relating to the appropriateness of data and models, the causality behind a correlative signal, and the problems associated with static data from dynamic systems. We summarize caveats reported by macroecological studies of biotic interactions and examine whether conclusions on the presence of biotic interactions are supported by the modelling approaches used. Irrespective of the method used, studies that set out to test for biotic interactions find statistical associations in species’ co-occurrences, yet when compared with our list of questions, few purported interpretations of such associations as biotic interactions hold up to scrutiny. This does not dismiss the presence or importance of biotic interactions, but highlights the risk of too lenient interpretation of the data. We conclude that ecologists have to recognize that a species association pattern in joint species distribution models will be driven not only by real biotic interactions, but also by shared habitat preferences, common migration history, phylogenetic history and shared response to missing environmental drivers, which specifically need to be discussed and, if possible, integrated into models.

What the paper shows and why it matters (AI-generated)

Studies inferring species interactions from co-occurrence patterns almost always find statistical associations — the question this paper raises is whether those associations actually mean what's claimed. Its ten diagnostic questions distinguish real biotic-interaction signals from shared habitat preference, common migration history, phylogenetic relatedness and missing environmental drivers, and applying them to the existing literature, the authors find few purported interpretations hold up to scrutiny. Given how widely joint species distribution models are now used to claim evidence of interactions, that checklist has become a standard citation for tempering exactly those claims.