Many statistical methods attempt to detect species associations-and so infer interspecific interactions-from species co-occurrence patterns. Habitat heterogeneity and out-of-equilibrium colonization histories are well recognized as potentially causing species associations, even when interactions are absent. The potential for patch disturbance, a classical component of metacommunity dynamics, to also drive spurious species associations has however been overlooked. Using a new general metacommunity model, we derive mathematical predictions regarding how patch disturbance would affect the patterns of species associations detected in 'null' co-occurrence matrices. We also conduct numerical simulations to test our predictions and to compare the performance of several widespread statistical methods, including direct tests of pairwise independence, matrix permutation approaches and joint species distribution modelling. We show how classical metacommunity dynamics can produce statistical associations, both positive and negative, even when species do not interact, when there is no habitat heterogeneity, and at equilibrium. This occurs as soon as there is some rate of patch disturbance (i.e. simultaneous extinction of several species in a patch) and/or a finite life span of patches, a common feature of a broad range of plant, animal or microbial systems. Patch disturbance can compromise species co-occurrence analyses and cause the artefactual detection of species associations if not taken into account. Including patch age (i.e. the time since the last patch disturbance event) as a covariate in a joint species distribution model can resolve the artefact. However, this requires additional data that often are not available in practice. We argue that the consequences of patch disturbance should not be underestimated when analysing species distribution patterns in metacommunity-like systems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.