An R package for metacommunity simulations and functions to calculate biodiversity metrics

MCSim is a package for R that can be used to design lottery-based simulations of metacommunities, which can be used to test assumptions about how metacommunity dynamics influence emergent biodiversity patterns. See my paper in Ecological Modelling (link), which uses MCSim v0.3. In v0.4.2, users can make use of igraph to design network topology and seed simulations with observed data. Most recently, v0.4.9 provides users control over temporal variability in the landscape as well as some new plotting functions. v0.5.0 provides plotting functions and an intro vignette (“MCSim-intro”). Please find the current version under development at https://github.com/sokole/MCSim.

Tutorials

• An introduction to metacommunity simulations (MCSim) for R
• Modeling disturbance with metacommunity simulations (MCSim)
• Exploring species area relationships with MetaCommunity Simulations (MCSim) - still in development

Useful links and related projects

• MCSim details, news, and tutorials
• Application of metacommunity simulations at the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER
• The LTER Metacommunities Working Group project page
• LTER Metacommunities on github

Please feel free to email me with questions, suggestions, etc.

Eric R. Sokol

sokole@gmail.com

How to install MCSim

# Install without vignette(s)
remotes::install_github("sokole/MCSim")

# Install with vignette(s)
remotes::install_github("sokole/MCSim", build_vignettes = TRUE)