Glossary

The following table provides definitions and explanations of modelling terms, parameters, and ecological concepts as they are used throughout this section:

Term	Meaning
Activity Curve	A curve describing how the relative observed activity or detectability of a species changes through the year.
Baseline	The persistent background level of activity or detectability present throughout the year.
Circular Month Distance	A measure of separation between two points in the annual cycle that treats the year as circular, so that December and January are adjacent rather than distant.
Circular Time	A representation of the year in which December and January are treated as adjacent, allowing seasonal cycles to wrap continuously across the year boundary.
Clustering	A method used to group species with similar seasonal ecological characteristics into broader neighbourhood structures.
Consensus Derivation	The process of combining multiple well-fitting parameter sets to produce a representative seasonal description for a species.
Consensus Parameters	A representative parameter set derived from multiple well-fitting model runs, intended to capture the broad seasonal structure of a species.
Cosine Forcing	A smooth seasonal driver based on a cosine-shaped annual cycle, used to represent gradual environmental change through the year.
Detectability	The likelihood of observing or recording a species, rather than a direct measure of absolute abundance.
Ecological Feature Space	A shared mathematical representation in which species are positioned according to their seasonal ecological characteristics.
Ecological Neighbourhood	A group of species occupying nearby regions of seasonal ecological space and sharing broadly similar seasonal structure.
Feature Matrix	A table describing species using fitted parameters and derived seasonal characteristics, allowing comparison across model families.
Fitted Curve	The simulated seasonal curve produced by the model after parameter fitting.
Fitting Method	The overall procedure used to compare model simulations against observed seasonal data and identify parameter sets producing the closest agreement.
Model Family	One of the three broad seasonal model types: Seasonal presence, resident detectability, winter presence
Normalisation	The process of scaling model outputs so that the peak value equals 1.0, allowing comparison of seasonal shape independent of magnitude.
Normalisation Method	The procedure used to scale model outputs onto a common relative range, allowing seasonal patterns to be compared independent of absolute magnitude.
Occupancy	The extent to which a species is present or observable across the annual cycle.
ODE Integration	The numerical process used to simulate how model activity changes continuously through time according to the governing equations of the system.
Parameter Fitting	The process of repeatedly running a model with different parameter combinations to identify those producing the closest agreement with observed data.
Persistence	The tendency for activity or detectability to remain elevated after seasonal conditions begin to change.
Random Search	A parameter fitting approach in which model parameters are repeatedly selected randomly from within a defined search space and evaluated against observed data.
Search Space	The range of allowable parameter values explored during the fitting process.
Seasonal Forcing	A smooth annual driver representing seasonal environmental change within the model.
Seasonal Forcing Function	The mathematical function used to represent cyclical seasonal environmental influence within the model.
Seasonal Suppression	A reduction in modelled activity outside the active seasonal period.
Seasonal Window	The part of the year during which presence or activity is biologically possible within the model.
Similarity Matrix	A pairwise comparison of species based on their fitted seasonal ecological characteristics.
Synthesised Curve	A reconstructed seasonal curve generated from the fitted model and scaled to match the observed data range for visual comparison.
Weighted Ecological Distance	A similarity measure in which some seasonal ecological characteristics contribute more strongly than others when comparing species.
Winter Visitor	A species whose primary period of activity or presence occurs during the winter months, typically spanning the year boundary.