Joint Species Distribution Modelling (JSDM) using HMSC: A Hierarchical Modelling Approach (JSDM01) – Applications for Evolutionary Biology https://prstats.org/course/joint-species-distribution-modelling-jsdm01/ Delivered by Dr Bastien Parisy, a community ecologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on community ecology and species interactions, particularly plant–soil microbe interactions and responses to environmental change. His work combines field and experimental ecology with quantitative approaches including network analysis and Joint Species Distribution Models (JSDMs), particularly HMSC. Learn how to analyse multi-species ecological and evolutionary data using Joint Species Distribution Models in R, integrating environmental responses with species traits, phylogenetic relationships, spatial and temporal structure, and patterns of species co-occurrence. Using the Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) framework, participants will learn how phylogenetic relationships and species traits can be incorporated directly into hierarchical community models. This makes HMSC particularly useful for research at the interface of evolutionary biology, community ecology, trait evolution and biogeography. What you'll gain Understand the principles of Joint Species Distribution Modelling (JSDMs) Understand the structure and applications of HMSC Prepare and structure multi-species datasets Integrate environmental, trait and phylogenetic information Relate species occurrences or abundances to environmental covariates Investigate how species traits influence environmental responses Examine whether evolutionary relationships help explain similarities and differences among species Account for spatial and temporal structure Build hierarchical community models in R Translate evolutionary and ecological hypotheses into HMSC models Understand the Bayesian and MCMC methods underlying HMSC Assess model convergence and quality of fit Evaluate predictive performance using cross-validation Interpret results at species and community levels Investigate species co-occurrence and residual associations Explore relationships between environmental responses and species characteristics Relate model outputs to niche theory and community assembly Produce and visualise HMSC outputs Report HMSC analyses appropriately in scientific manuscripts HMSC explicitly allows environmental covariates, traits and phylogeny to be incorporated within the same modelling framework. Course format Dates: 26–29 October 2026 Time: 12:00–17:30 UK time each day Duration: 4 days, 5.5 hours per day (22 hours total) Format: Live online Combination of lectures and hands-on practical exercises in R Participants are encouraged to bring their own datasets for discussion Code, datasets and presentation materials provided All sessions recorded 30 days' access to recordings 30 days of post-course email support Course fee: £450 Who is this course for? The course is particularly relevant to students and researchers working in: Evolutionary biology Evolutionary ecology Community ecology Phylogenetic community ecology Trait-based ecology Comparative ecology Biogeography and macroecology Community assembly Biodiversity research Species–environment relationships Spatial and temporal ecology Quantitative ecology It will be especially useful for evolutionary researchers working with multi-species datasets containing trait or phylogenetic information, and for those interested in connecting evolutionary relationships and species characteristics with ecological responses. Why take this course? Species are not necessarily evolutionarily independent units. Shared evolutionary history may be associated with similarities in traits and ecological characteristics, while divergence among lineages can contribute to differences in how species respond to their environments. HMSC provides a framework for incorporating species traits and phylogenetic relationships directly alongside environmental, spatial and temporal predictors. This allows researchers to investigate multi-species patterns while considering both ecological variation and evolutionary relationships. For evolutionary biologists, this provides a useful framework for questions concerning trait–environment relationships, niche differentiation, community assembly, phylogenetic structure and variation in environmental responses among species. Participants will learn how to formulate these questions as hierarchical models and then fit, validate, interpret and report them using HMSC in R. Please feel free to share this course with colleagues, friends, research groups, labs, and others within your institute, organisation, or wider research network. Learn more & enrol Joint Species Distribution Modelling (JSDM) using HMSC: A Hierarchical Modelling Approach (JSDM01) https://prstats.org/course/joint-species-distribution-modelling-jsdm01/ Questions? Email: oliver@prstats.org Best wishes, Oliver Hooker PR Stats (to subscribe/unsubscribe the EvolDir send mail to evoldir@evoldir.net)