Introduction

This complete tutorial introduces all the possibilities of the virtualspecies package. It was written with the objective to be helpful for both beginners and experienced R users. You can read this tutorial in full or jump to the particular section you are looking for. In each section, you will find simple examples introducing each function, followed by detailed examples for almost every possible parametrisation in virtualspecies.

After a small introduction on the spatial data used as input for the virtualspecies package (section 1.), you will be introduced to the basics of generating virtual species distributions: the two possible approaches to create species-environment relationships (sections 2. and 3.), followed by the conversion of environmental suitability to presence-absence (section 4.). After that, you will see how to generate random virtual species (section 5.), and most importantly, how to explore, extract, and use the outputs of virtualspecies (section 6.). Then, you will see how to sample occurrence points (section 7.). Finally, you will learn about how to general dispersal limitations to your virtual species in section 8.

I will make extensive use of climate data as an example here, but remember that you can use other types of data, as long as it is in the format described in section 1.