Justification for jointly modeling spatial and temporal heterogeneity

Determine whether incorporating both spatial and temporal heterogeneity in selection strength improves the adequacy and inferential value of evolutionary fitness-landscape models, and establish why such added complexity should be included.

Background

The paper separately develops spatially averaged fitness landscapes and temporally fluctuating diffusion models. It notes that combining both forms of heterogeneity would require additional stochastic processes for model parameters, thereby introducing substantially greater estimation difficulty. The authors leave unresolved whether this added complexity is justified and what scientific benefits it provides.

References

The natural ``want'' in this case is to incorporate both spatial and temporal heterogeneities. Doing so can of course be done, the question is should adding complexity be done and why?

— Novel models of trait evolution via an expansion of Lande's fitness function: The Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process meets the Little Prince's boa  (2608.20232 - Ponciano et al., 20 Aug 2026) in Section “Stochastic dynamics under temporal and spatial heterogeneities”