GLOSSA (Global Ocean Species Spatio-temporal Analysis) is an open-source, user-friendly R Shiny application designed for modeling marine species distribution. Written in R, GLOSSA uses the Shiny and bs4Dash libraries to provide an intuitive interface for fitting species distribution models using presence/absence or presence-only (pseudo-absences will be generated) data. The app uses flexible machine learning techniques like Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART), enabling users to model species distributions across different temporal and spatial scales and forecast future scenarios based on environmental data. With GLOSSA, users can explore current and future suitable habitats and visualize results with minimal coding expertise.
You can install and run GLOSSA using the following R code:
install.packages("glossa")
library(glossa)
run_glossa()To install the development version of GLOSSA from GitHub, use:
if (!require("devtools"))
install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("iMARES-group/glossa")For detailed documentation, tutorials, and examples on how to use GLOSSA, visit the official website:
- Development version in progress (19/09/2025)
- CRAN release: v1.2.4 (19/09/2025)
See the full changelog
Please cite the following paper if you are using GLOSSA in your research:
Mestre-Tomás, J., Fuster-Alonso, A., Bellido, J. M., & Coll, M. (2025). GLOSSA: A user-friendly R Shiny application for Bayesian machine learning analysis of marine species distribution. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 00, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210x.70167