BioDinamica: a toolkit for analyses of biodiversity and biogeography on the Dinamica-EGO modelling platform

Ubirajara Oliveira; Britaldo Soares-Filho; Rômulo Fernandes Machado Leitão; Hermann O Rodrigues

doi:10.7717/peerj.7213

BioDinamica: a toolkit for analyses of biodiversity and biogeography on the Dinamica-EGO modelling platform

PeerJ. 2019 Jul 12:7:e7213. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7213. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Ubirajara Oliveira¹, Britaldo Soares-Filho¹, Rômulo Fernandes Machado Leitão¹, Hermann O Rodrigues¹

Affiliation

¹ Centro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais-UFMG, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil.

Abstract

Biogeography and macroecology are at the heart of the debate on ecology and evolution. We have developed the BioDinamica package, a suite of user-friendly graphical programs for analysing spatial patterns of biogeography and macroecology. BioDinamica includes analyses of beta-diversity, species richness, endemicity, phylo-diversity, species distribution models, predictive models of biodiversity patterns, and several tools for spatial biodiversity analysis. BioDinamica consists of a sub-library of Dinamica-EGO operators developed by integrating EGO native functions with R scripts. The BioDinamica operators can be assembled to create complex analytical and simulation models through the EGO graphical programming interface. In addition, we make available "Wizard" tutorials for end users. BioDinamica can be downloaded free of charge from the Dinamica EGO submodel store. The tools made available in BioDinamica not only facilitate complex biodiversity analyses, they also help develop state-of-the-art spatial models for biogeography and macroecology studies.

Keywords: Beta-diversity; GIS; Modelling; Phylogenetic spatial analyses; Spatial patterns; Species distribution models.

Grants and funding

Ubirajara Oliveira and Britaldo Soares Filho received support from CNPQ, FAPEMIG, Climate and Land Use Alliance, the World Bank, and the Humboldt Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.