With the advent and diversification of hierarchical occupancy model
types and their implementation, we aim to evaluate their use and
implementation in the peer-reviewed literature (see an overview of
occupancy models by \citealp{Iknayan_2014} and \citealp{Kellner_2023}). This evaluation
aims to identify taxa, detection procedures used, study designs, and
models adopted by researchers, as well as to examine scientometric
trends. The objectives of the study are: 1) to provide a synthesis of
taxa, geographic focus, scale, data types, and hierarchical occupancy
model variants to date; 2) to identify important contributors to
hierarchical occupancy literature and generate research insights using a
scientometrical perspective and mapping the co-authorship network and
co-citation network; and 3) to identify recommendations to promote the
increased use of hierarchical methods as a robust choice for
biodiversity monitoring.
Methods
Literature search and inclusion criteria
We conducted a review of English-written scientific literature (i.e.,
peer-reviewed articles), published up to December 2022 (excluding early
access articles) that apply hierarchical modeling to address research
questions in population and community ecology to understand patterns of
species abundance, occupancy, co-occurrence or communities and
meta-communities. Article selection was conducted according to the
Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
(PRISMA) guidelines, which provide a transparent workflow to report
systematic literature reviews \citep{Page_2021}. The workflow is
presented in Figure \ref{118309}.