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Reply to: Capturing stochasticity properly is key to understanding the nuances of the Living Planet Index

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 7, pages 1196–1198 (2023)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 17 July 2023

The Original Article was published on 05 June 2023

This article has been updated

replying to E. J. Talis & H. J. Lynch Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-0286-w (2023)

In their recent communication, Talis and Lynch1 raise two issues about our study2, which showed how random population fluctuations introduce biases when calculating the Living Planet Index (LPI). First, they maintain that because additive population fluctuations may be less prevalent in nature than multiplicative fluctuations, we overstated the effects of the former on the LPI. Second, they claim that the bias we identified in fluctuating populations that increase or decrease nonlinearly is not an inherent limitation of the LPI, but rather a shortcoming of the generalized additive models (GAMs) used to interpolate and smooth population time series. This can be remedied, they argue, by using state–space models instead of GAMs.

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Fig. 1: Additive stochasticity affects the LPI, whereas multiplicative stochasticity does not.

Data availability

This manuscript contains no empirical data. Simulated data can be generated using the accompanying R scripts, available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7841252.

Code availability

The code used to generate Fig. 1 is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7841252.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Animal Ecology, Global Change and Sustainable Development, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Falko T. Buschke

  2. Department of Marine Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    James G. Hagan

  3. Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Centre, Gothenburg, Sweden

    James G. Hagan

  4. Department of Biology and Biotechnologies “Charles Darwin”, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Luca Santini

  5. Department of Zoology & Entomology, University of Pretoria, Hatfield, South Africa

    Bernard W. T. Coetzee

Authors
  1. Falko T. Buschke
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  2. James G. Hagan
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  3. Luca Santini
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  4. Bernard W. T. Coetzee
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Contributions

F.T.B. developed the simulation and wrote the first draft, J.G.H., L.S. and B.W.T.C. revised and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Falko T. Buschke.

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Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Buschke, F.T., Hagan, J.G., Santini, L. et al. Reply to: Capturing stochasticity properly is key to understanding the nuances of the Living Planet Index. Nat Ecol Evol 7, 1196–1198 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02087-9

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