Testing biological hypotheses in site occupancy models: a Bayesian approach

The occupancy rate of a target species in a region divided in quadrats (or sites) is defined as the proportion of quadrats occupied by this species. This is a key quantity in site occupancy models which typically remains unknown after the data are collected, because the probability of detecting a target species in a given quadrat is < 1. Implementing tests on occupancy rates leads to a quite unusu…