Dear all,
The Edinburgh local group of the Royal Statistical Society will be
hosting the following event on Monday 18th February. The event is free,
and open to all; no registration is required. The event will be followed
by the AGM of the Edinburgh local group.
Many thanks,
Adam Butler, RSS Edinburgh local group (http://www.rss.org.uk/edinburgh)
=======================================================
*** Using statistics to study wildlife ***
Monday 18th February, 6-7pm (refreshments from 5.30pm)
Ruth King (University of St. Andrews)
Megan Towers (Scottish Natural Heritage)
Kate Searle (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology)
15 South College Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AA
Abstracts:
-- Kate Searle (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) --
Analysis of ecological data: "ecology isn't rocket science, it's harder"
Drawing inference in ecology is inherently difficult. Ecological
processes and systems are multi-faceted and multi-scaled, such that an
understanding of any individual part of the system requires recognition
of drivers and constraints resulting from many interconnected processes.
Moreover, states and variables within ecological systems are often not
able to be measured directly, but must be inferred from surrogate
observations. This means that ecological data typically confound simple
statistical approaches due to factors such as detectability, sampling
error, overdispersion, zero-inflation, and unequal sampling effort over
space and time. In this presentation I will give a brief overview of
statistical problems commonly encountered by wildlife ecologists, and
present examples of empirical approaches for overcoming, or at least
mitigating, some of these issues.
-- Megan Towers (Scottish Natural Heritage) --
Working as a statistician within Scottish Natural Heritage
This talk will include work to look at power analyses for monitoring
otter activity within the Scottish Beaver Trial and revegation within
the Monadhliath mountains. The former is an example of estimating the
sample size necessary to detect a given effect size and the latter is an
example of estimating what effect size it is reasonable to be able to
detect given the current monitoring effort.
-- Ruth King (University of St. Andrews) --
Incorporating individual time-varying covariates within the analysis of
capture-recapture data
Capture-recapture studies are often undertaken in order to obtain data
on wildlife populations, where individuals are repeatedly sampled over a
period of time. Within such studies interest often lies in the
relationship between survival probabilities and individual level
covariates (such as weight, breeding status etc.). However, individuals
are typically not observed at every capture event, leading to unobserved
(or missing) time-varying individual covariates at these times. Recent
approaches for dealing with such missing covariate information within
capture-recapture data will be presented and discussed.
-- Annual general meeting of the Edinburgh local group of the Royal
Statistical Society --
The meeting will be followed by the Annual General Meeting of the
Edinburgh RSS local group. Please could you let me know as soon as
possible (by emailing [log in to unmask]) if you have any items that you
would like us to add to the agenda for this meeting. The AGM will
include elections to the local group committee - elections will be held
for Ordinary Members, and for the positions of Treasurer, Secretary and
Chair. Further information may be found by following the links on the
local group website (http://rss.org.uk/edinburgh) - the following PDF
file summarises the responsibilities associated with each of the roles:
http://www.bioss.ac.uk/people/adam/rsse/EdinbLocalGroup_responsibilities.pdf
Please could you contact me if you would be interested in standing for
election to any of the positions, or if you have any further questions
about the roles.
--
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James Hutton Institute (JHI), a registered Scottish charity No. SC041796
and a company limited by guarantee No. SC374831
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