Computes the probability of a set of species abundances of a single or multiple samples of individuals with one or more guilds under a mainland-island model. One must specify the mainland (metacommunity) model and the island (local) community model. It assumes that species fluctuate independently. The package also contains functions to simulate under this model. See Haegeman, B. & R.S. Etienne (2017). A general sampling formula for community structure data. Methods in Ecology & Evolution 8: 1506-1519 <doi:10.1111/2041-210X.12807>.

Provides the density, distribution, quantile and generation functions of some obscure probability 
    distributions, including the doubly non-central t, F, Beta, and Eta distributions; 
    the lambda-prime and K-prime; the upsilon distribution; the (weighted) sum of 
    non-central chi-squares to a power; the (weighted) sum of log non-central chi-squares;
    the product of non-central chi-squares to powers; the product of doubly non-central
    F variables; the product of independent normals.

Maximum likelihood tools to fit and compare models of species
    abundance distributions and of species rank-abundance distributions.

Time series area-level models for small area estimation. 
      The package supplements the functionality of the sae package. Specifically, it includes
      EBLUP fitting of the Rao-Yu model in the original form without a spatial component. 
      The package also offers a modified ("dynamic") version of the Rao-Yu model, replacing
      the assumption of stationarity. Both univariate and multivariate applications are
      supported. Of particular note is the allowance for covariance of the area-level sample 
      estimates over time, as encountered in rotating panel designs such as the U.S. National 
      Crime Victimization Survey or present in a time-series of 5-year estimates from the 
      American Community Survey. Key references to the methods include
      J.N.K. Rao and I. Molina (2015, ISBN:9781118735787),
      J.N.K. Rao and M. Yu (1994) <doi:10.2307/3315407>, and
      R.E. Fay and R.A. Herriot (1979) <doi:10.1080/01621459.1979.10482505>.