Instruct: Identify the main and secondary category of Arxiv papers based on the titles and abstracts
Query: Reinterpreting Maximum Entropy in Ecology: a null hypothesis constrained
  by ecological mechanism   Simplified mechanistic models in ecology have been criticized for the fact
that a good fit to data does not imply the mechanism is true: pattern does not
equal process. In parallel, the maximum entropy principle (MaxEnt) has been
applied in ecology to make predictions constrained by just a handful of state
variables, like total abundance or species richness. But an outstanding
question remains: what principle tells us which state variables to constrain?
Here we attempt to solve both problems simultaneously, by translating a given
set of mechanisms into the state variables to be used in MaxEnt, and then using
this MaxEnt theory as a null model against which to compare mechanistic
predictions. In particular, we identify the sufficient statistics needed to
parametrize a given mechanistic model from data and use them as MaxEnt
constraints. Our approach isolates exactly what mechanism is telling us over
and above the state variables alone.

26
The categories of this paper are: bayes-an
23
The categories of this paper are: solv-int
6
The categories of this paper are: astro-ph
27
The categories of this paper are: comp-gas
24
The categories of this paper are: dg-ga
1
The categories of this paper are: cs
28
The categories of this paper are: alg-geom
22
The categories of this paper are: chao-dyn
34
The categories of this paper are: chem-ph
25
The categories of this paper are: patt-sol
9
The categories of this paper are: nlin
8
The categories of this paper are: hep-ex
11
The categories of this paper are: hep-lat
19
The categories of this paper are: eess
7
The categories of this paper are: hep-th
3
The categories of this paper are: physics