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RSS Merseyside Local Group Meeting – Wildlife Statistics The next RSS Merseyside Local Group meeting will take place on Wednesday 7th February at 14.00pm at the University of Liverpool. Room 521, Cedar House (Building 360, gridsquare D10 on campus map - https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/files/docs/maps/liverpool-university-campus-map.pdf). We welcome Dr Marcus Rowcliffe from the Zoological Society of London, and Richard Glennie from the University of St Andrews to talk about Wildlife Statistics. 14.00-15.00 Dr Marcus Rowcliffe (Zoological Society of London): Theory and practice in estimating abundance of unmarked wildlife using camera traps Camera traps have been around as a major research tool for several decades now, but the statistical methods for extracting robust inference from the data they generate remain a work in progress. Fortunately this is rapidly changing, in particular in the area of abundance estimation. While species with individually recognisable markings (e.g tigers) have well developed methods available based on capture recapture techniques, most species are not recognisable in this way, and methods applicable to these species are emerging but less well developed. In this presentation, I’ll review developments in this area and take a look at prospects for future steps. 15.00-15.15 Tea & Coffee Break 15.15-16.00 Richard Glennie (University of St Andrews): Encounters between animals and detectors in wildlife abundance surveys Distance sampling and spatial capture-recapture are popular methods to estimate how many animals are in a wild population and where they spend their time. Both methods use data collected when detectors (e.g. human observers or cameras) survey a study region and encounter animals. Encounters depend on the unobserved path an animal travels and on the probability of each animal being detected. Current methods focus on models for the detection probability and not the animal movement. In this talk, a new continuous space-time encounter model is presented that incorporates both detection and movement. The computationally demanding task of averaging over all possible paths an animal could have travelled during the survey is overcome by discrete approximation. The new framework is a generalisation of both distance sampling and spatial capture-recapture. The new method has shown that conventional distance sampling can substantially overestimate abundance when animals move, calling into question the conservation and management decisions based on distance sampling estimates. One case study of spotted dolphins in the Eastern Tropical Pacific indicates abundance may be overestimated by more than 20%. For spatial capture-recapture, the new method provides richer inference on where animals spend their time and allows for movement to depend on landscape features. The method is applied to a camera trap survey of jaguars where their movement depends on their home range and their preference to move along trails and rivers. The event is open to all, but as ever, please register in advance so that we can organise refreshments. For more information, and for the link to register, see https://sites.google.com/site/rssmerseyside/research-meetings/wildlife-statistics Many thanks Maria Sudell Secretary, RSS Merseyside Local Group www.rss.org.uk The RSS is a registered charity No. 306096 Department of Biostatistics Block F, Waterhouse Building University of Liverpool 1-5 Brownlow Street Liverpool, L69 3GL 0151 7949703 [log in to unmask] You may leave the list at any time by sending the command SIGNOFF allstat to [log in to unmask], leaving the subject line blank.