Fig. 1: Illustration the modeling procedure.
From: Linking functional traits and demography to model species-rich communities
From a data table (a) of three empirical functional traits data (t1, t2, t3), we use a “transfer function” (b) controlled by a set of transfer function parameters {φi,1, φi,2, ai, bi}. Together they predict demographic parameter values across species (c). The community model (d) is then run based on the demographic parameter table. The likelihood of empirical community data given the parametrization is estimated using an appropriate likelihood function (e). The latter depends on the nature of the community model output and of the observed data (e.g. species abundances, species presence/absence, community diversity etc…). The likelihood value sets the next iteration of the distribution sampler by adjusting the transfer function parameters (f).
