Advancing ecological community analysis with MrIML 2.0: Unravelling taxa
associations through interpretable machine learning
Abstract
Understanding the assembly of ecological communities is a core goal in
ecology. Despite advancements in statistical models, disentangling the
influences of biotic and abiotic constraints on communities remains
challenging due to data complexity. We introduce the MrIML 2.0 R package
(multi-response interpretable machine learning) which employs machine
learning to approximate graphical network models (GGNs), revealing
complex relationships in community structure, including asymmetric
co-occurrence associations where one species influences another but not
vice versa. Using the Tidymodels R architecture, we empower users to
build models across algorithms and interpret them using interpretable
machine learning (IML) approaches. Our method captures known
interactions in simulated data and improves upon commonly used models by
quantifying marginal relationships that capture non-linear biotic
relationships and complex predictor interactions. We validate our
approach on a range of datasets, highlighting the method’s efficacy in
providing high-resolution insights into community dynamics and
generating new hypotheses for ecological research.