This pre-symposium workshop essentially aims at writing a paper reviewing the ecological and statistical approaches to the detection and correlative modelling of biotic interactions at macroecological scales. There are now a good dozen or so publications that in one way or another put biotic interactions into species distribution models (reader will be provided two weeks in advance). Some seem to be more wishful thinking, others make very clever arguments. So can we, or can we not, put biotic interactions into SDM? And if so, do these publications tell us how? Ideally participants will have some first-hand experience with collecting data on species distributions or population size; basic knowledge of population ecology (e.g. Lotka-Volterra-like models to represent biotic interactions); and superficial familiarity with SDMs (i.e. spatial analysis of species occurrence/abundance data). Anti-authoritarian tendencies must be considered an advantage (and are required if some well-known scientist has ventilated a questionable idea). Format The workshop will fill two intense working days, largely in subgroups, interspersed with plenary feedback sessions. There will be no talks (other than a brief overview of papers and practices), and the aim is to have a review structured and ready for delegation to subgroups to finalise the details, to be submitted within a few months after the workshop