We are pleased to introduce sabinaMBM, an R package for fitting multiscale Bayesian species distribution models within a unified probabilistic framework, built on inlabru and R-INLA. The work, led by Jennifer Morales-Barbero together with Virgilio Gómez-Rubio, Javier Seoane, Antoine Adde, Teresa Goicolea and Rubén G. Mateo, is available as a preprint on bioRxiv.
Species distribution models calibrated over spatially restricted extents tend to truncate species’ ecological niches. Existing nested workflows combine information from different scales sequentially, which limits the formal propagation of uncertainty across scales. sabinaMBM fits global and regional data jointly and propagates uncertainty without the computational cost of MCMC-based methods.
- Flexible coupling across scales: the package offers several architectures, from independent models to hierarchical constraint, which can be configured separately for intercepts and covariates.
- Results: in a range-margin population, hierarchical constraint most improved out-of-sample discrimination where regional data were scarcest. In the case study of Quercus petraea at the trailing edge of its Iberian distribution, including a spatial field produced the largest performance gain and, under future climate, the constrained model estimated less suitable habitat and distributed uncertainty according to cross-scale agreement.
- Applications: regional and range-margin populations, invasive species and projections under environmental change, where niche truncation can lead to ecologically implausible outcomes.
For more information:
- Preprint on bioRxiv
- Package repository on GitHub, with installation instructions
Reference: Morales-Barbero, J., Gómez-Rubio, V., Seoane, J., Adde, A., Goicolea, T. and Mateo, R. G. (2026). sabinaMBM: An R package for multiscale Bayesian species distribution modelling using INLA. Preprint, bioRxiv.
This work was carried out within the NextDive project (PID2021-124187NB-I00), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and by “ERDF A way of making Europe”.