Wildlife Seasonal Modelling

The Seasonal Analyses describe the year through observation - repeated encounters with species, recorded over time and examined for pattern.

The models on this page take a different approach. Rather than describing what is seen, they explore what simple processes might give rise to those patterns. Each model begins with a small set of assumptions - about presence, detectability, and seasonal change - and asks whether these are sufficient to reproduce the curves observed in the data.

Two distinct ways of occupying the year emerge. Some species are present only for part of the year: flowering, migrating, or otherwise appearing within a defined seasonal window. Others are always present, but vary in how readily they are observed, their detectability rising and falling with behaviour, habitat use, and life cycle.

These differences suggest two complementary models. One describes seasonal presence, where activity is confined to a window and falls rapidly outside it. The other describes resident detectability, where presence is continuous and the observed signal reflects variation in visibility rather than absence.

The models are deliberately simple. They are not intended to predict future observations or capture every detail of ecological process. Instead, they act as a way of thinking - a means of testing whether the broad patterns seen in the analyses can arise from straightforward mechanisms.

In this way, the models sit alongside the observations. The analyses describe how species occupy the year; the models ask how those patterns might come to be.

Available Models

Interpretation

These models are deliberately simple and abstract — closer to minimal representations than detailed ecological mechanisms — and are intended to explore whether the observed patterns can arise from a small number of underlying processes, not to predict observations.