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Dear Colleagues, The next Royal Statistical Society Manchester Local Group meeting is taking place on Wednesday 16th May 2012. Please note the change in venue from our usual meeting place; the Williamson Building is number 52 on The University of Manchester campus maps: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/travel/maps/ --------------------------------------- Date: Wednesday 16th May 2012 Time: 16.00 - 17.00 Venue: G47 Williamson Building, Oxford Road, The University of Manchester Dr Adam Butler Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland TITLE: Understanding seabirds: a statistical perspective ABSTRACT: Seabirds are a familiar but elusive part of our natural environment, and a vital part of the marine ecosystem. We need to be able to understand the key aspects of their behaviour - such as breeding and foraging - in order to assess the impacts of fisheries, offshore renewable projects or Marine Protected Areas. This understanding relies upon data, but data on seabirds are, typically, difficult to collect: colonies are often in isolated and inaccessible locations, and birds may spend a large proportion of their time at sea. In this talk I will outline the main sources of data that are available for studying seabirds - censuses, annual colony counts, ship-based surveys, and electronic tags - and will illustrate the statistical issues that are associated with analyzing each of these sources of data. I will outline some of the ways in which modern statistical methods - including hidden Markov models, generalized linear mixed models and hierarchical Bayesian approaches - can be used to draw inferences about behaviour, abundance and spatial distribution, and will discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise from the increasing availability of electronic tag data. All are welcome to attend. For more information, please visit: http://www.rss-manchester.org/ ---------------------------------------- Dr Richard Emsley MRC Research Fellow Biostatistics, Health Sciences Research Group School of Community Based Medicine The University of Manchester 4.304 Jean McFarlane Building Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL 0161 306 8002 Chairman, Royal Statistical Society Manchester Local Group http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/staff/RichardEmsley You may leave the list at any time by sending the command SIGNOFF allstat to [log in to unmask], leaving the subject line blank.