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 an author 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 those that did not discuss the results obtained with observational data were excluded after confirmation by a second researcher. When disagreement occurred, consensus was reached through discussions between the two authors or by referring to a third researcher. The search yielded 5322 articles, of which 4654 did not meet the criteria listed above, resulting in a database of 668 articles focused on applied hierarchical modeling.