François Duchenne

The dataset contains nine 0s and one 1. One approach is to nudge our 0s towards .01 and our 1s to .99, or apply a special formula (Smithson & Verkuilen, 2006) so values fall within the [0, 1] interval. We implore readers not to engage in this practice. Kubinec (2022) showed that this practice can result in serious distortion of the outcome as the sample size grows larger, resulting in ever smaller values that are “nudged”. Because the Beta distribution is a non-linear model of the outcome, values that are very close to the boundary, such as 0.00001 or 0.99999, will be highly influential outliers.

#stats Modelling proportion data? A reminder that adding small values to true zeroes (or subtracting from 1) can severely distort results

Instead, try ordered beta models (or ZOIB) available in brms, ordbetareg or glmmTMB #rstats 📦

Great tutorial: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

When cheating turns into a stabilizing mechanism of plant–pollinator communities Mutualistic interactions, such as plant-mycorrhizal or plant-pollinator interactions, are widespread in ecological communities and frequently exploited by cheaters. This combination of theoretical mod...

This was the preliminary work of our study focusing on the consequences of nectar robbing for community stability (doi.org/10.1371/jour...), but order of publication got reversed on the way

Both groups of birds pollinate flowers in a legitimate way when flower and bir dmorphologies are compatibel (bill < corolla) and when morphologies are compatible (corolla > bill), both groups shift to robbing, although flowerpiercers shift faster than hummingbirds.

Nice to see the masster thesis of Stéphane Aubert finally published !
doi.org/10.1002/oik....
Flowerpiercers are often seen as robbers and hummingbirds as legitimate pollinators but here we show that it is not so black and white.👇

New preprint reexamining codiversification in mycorrhizal symbioses! 🌱🍄 Spoiler: We found evidence of coevolution, but not cospeciation/codiversification. Congrats Fantine for your great work! 😁

Downscaling mutualistic networks from species to individuals reveals consistent interaction niches and roles within plant populations Species-level networks emerge as the combination of interactions spanning multiple individuals, and their study has received considerable attention over the past 30 y. However, less is known about the structure of interaction configurations within species, even though individuals are the actual interacting units in nature. We compiled 46 empirical, individual-based, interaction networks on plant-animal seed dispersal mutualisms, comprising 1,037 plant individuals across 29 species from various regions. We compared the structure of individual-based networks to that of species-based networks and, by extending the niche concept to interaction assemblages, we explored individual plant specialization. Using a Bayesian framework to account for uncertainty derived from sampling, we examined how plant individuals “explore” the interaction niche of their populations. Both individual-based and species-based networks exhibited high variability in network properties, lacking remarkable structural and topological differences between them. Within populations, frugivores’ interaction allocation among plant individuals was highly heterogeneous, with one to three frugivore species dominating interactions. Regardless of species or bioregion, plant individuals displayed a variety of interaction profiles across populations, with a consistently-small percentage of individuals playing a central role and exhibiting high diversity in their interaction assemblage. Plant populations showed variable mid to low levels of niche specialization; and individuals’ interaction niche “breadth” accounted for 70% of the population interaction diversity, on average. Our results highlight how downscaling from species to individual-based networks helps understanding the structuring of interactions within ecological communities.

1/ New paper @pnas.org on the structure of mutualistic #networks between individuals plants and frugivore species.

Last chapter of @elequintero.bsky.social's PhD thesis

doi.org/10.1073/pnas... #ecopubs

Face à Laurent Wauquiez, des fermes soutiennent les agents de l'OFB Une « coalition d'idéologues » qui accable le monde agricole de « contrôles absurdes ». C'est en ces mots que le député LR Laurent Wauquiez qualifie l'Office Français de la Biodiversité dans un courri...

L'association fermes paysannes et sauvages, qui regroupe pres de 30 fermes et plusieurs naturalistes (dont je fais partie), a repondu a Laurent Wauquiez et Fabrice Pannekoucke.

A lire ici 👇

basta.media/Face-a-Laure...

👴A bit of old fashion network ecology: our paper trying to understand how frequent are forbidden links in plant-hummingbirds networks is now out in Ecology Letters.👇
doi.org/10.1111/ele....
Always a pleasure to work with the EPHI team on these amazing hummingbirds !