Concordia University Thèses et mémoires publiés en 2024

Predicting species abundance and community biomass is vital for ecosystem management, particularly in freshwater lakes, where this information guides conservation efforts, resource management, and biodiversity assessments. These metrics provide crucial insights into population dynamics, ecosystem productivity, and ecological balance. However, traditional models often rely on abiotic factors or limited species presence-absence data, missing the complex interspecies relationships that shape community structure and ecosystem function. This thesis aims to enhance predictive models of species abundance and biomass by incorporating community-level data, using latent variables derived from species co-occurrence and environmental variables. Latent variables are unobserved or hidden variables that are inferred …  Lire la suite