Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a very complex disease involving multiple factors that limit its emergence and spatial distribution. Prediction of cutaneous leishmaniasis epidemics in Tunisia remains difficult because most of the epidemiological tools used so far are descriptive in nature and mainly focus on a time dimension. The purpose of this work is to predict the potential geographic distributi...

Ecological niche modeling has emerged as an useful tool in the investigation of the phylogeographic histories of species or communities in a region. The high biodiversity (oftentimes cryptic), and complex geography and geological history of Southeast Asia particularly call for multipronged approaches in phylogeographic investigations. Past studies have focused on taxa that are associated with l...

Understanding the factors that contribute to the formation of population genetic structure is a central goal of phylogeographic research, but achieving this goal can be complicated by the stochastic variance inherent to genetic processes. Statistical approaches to testing phylogeographic hypotheses accommodate this stochasticity by evaluating competing models of putative historical population s...

Malaria is the leading cause of death in Kenya highlands. Malaria is a vector-borne disease and mosquito is the vector that transmits the parasites from infected people to others. Controlling mosquito larval habitats is important in eradicating malaria. Modeling the spatially distributed mosquito larval habitats is challenging. This study explores a mosquito habitat modeling approach, which int...

Introduction An ecological metaphor is often used in discussing the interrelated and interdependent organization of software development environments. We believe that this is a rich and potentially useful way of describing complex systems of people and technologies that are involved in developing, using, sustaining and archiving software. Further, an appropriate metaphor can be a useful analyti...

Species' invasions have long been regarded as enormously complex processes, so complex as to defy predictivity. Phases of this process, however, are emerging as highly predictable: the potential geographic course of an invasion can be anticipated with high precision based on the ecological niche characteristics of a species in its native geographic distributional area. This predictivity depends...

The present paper presents a preliminary approach to the modeling of dynamic properties of the spatial assortment of alcohol outlets using agent-based techniques. Individual drinkers and business establishments are the core agent types. Drinkers assort themselves by frequenting establishments due to spatial and social (niche) motivations. We examine a number of questions concerning the feedback...

We describe an algorithm that helps to predict potential distributional areas for species using presence-only records. The Marble Algorithm is a density-based clustering program based on Hutchinson's concept of ecological niches as multidimensional hypervolumes in environmental space. The algorithm characterizes this niche space using the density-based spatial clustering of applications with no...

This study examines the phylogeographic structure within the Patagonian lizard Liolaemus petrophilus and tests for patterns of between-clade morphological divergence and sexual dimorphism, as well as demographic and niche changes associated with Pleistocene climate changes. We inferred intraspecific relationships, tested hypotheses for historical patterns of population expansion, and incorporat...

In the past decades, it has been debated whether ecological niche should be conserved among closely related species (phylogenetic niche conservatism, PNC) or largely divergent (traditional ecological niche theory and ecological speciation) and whether niche specialist and generalist might remain in equilibrium or niche generalist could not appear. In this study, we employed morphological traits...