Recently, we modelled the Macquarie Island pest eradication project. This involved running a very large number of models, and then summarizing the results (see Raymond et al. (2011) for details). The figure below shows a parallel coordinates plot of one set of models.
This model was a simulation of the effects of removing cats and myxomatosis from the island ecosystem. Along the x-axis are the names of the species in the model ("Albatrosses", ...). The y-axis shows the proportion of responses in which the species in question was predicted to increase (in response to the removal of cats and myxo). Each thin, faint line shows an individual model. Where many lines overlay each other (i.e. where many models show a similar result), it has the effect of creating a thicker, stronger line. (The colours in the image are simply used to differentiate sets of results that are different from each other.)
We can see that some species show fairly consistent responses across all models — for example, redpolls and starlings (which are not native to the island) generally had few positive responses, indicating that they were fairly consistently predicted to decrease in response to the removal of cats and myxo. Other species showed divergent responses in different models: skuas generally increased, but in a small number of models (red lines) they were predicted to decrease.
References
Raymond, B., Bergstrom, D.M., McInnes, J., Dambacher, J.M., and Way, S. (2011) Qualitative modelling of invasive species eradication on subantarctic Macquarie Island. Journal of Applied Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2010.01916.x
