We searched Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate Plc) by topic (i.e., abstracts, keywords, and titles) using the following Boolean search string: (((((((((TS=(occupancy)) OR TS=(N-mixture)) OR TS=(multi-state)) OR TS=(”multi state”)) OR TS=(multi-scale)) OR TS=(”multi scale”)) OR TS=(abundance)) OR TS=(co-occupancy)) OR TS=(co-occurrence )) AND TS=(hierarchical). The search was limited to the following citation topics: Zoology & Animal Ecology, Entomology, Marine Biology, Soil Science, Zoonotic Diseases, Phylogenetics & Genomics, Sustainability Science, Environmental Sciences, Climate Change, Statistical Methods, Applied Statistics & Probability.
Articles were screened by a researcher and considered relevant if they applied hierarchical modeling for the analysis of ecological data (i.e., model occupancy/abundance and detection probability of at least one species) and used observational data. Studies that exclusively used simulation data were excluded after confirmation by a second researcher. When disagreement occurred, consensus was reached through discussions between the authors or referral to a third researcher. The search yielded 5322, articles of which 4654 did not fit the criteria listed above, resulting in a database of 668 articles focused on applied hierarchical modeling.