Oscar and Alex presented their work at the (virtual) RSS conference 2020 during the invited session on “Challenges and advances of spatial modelling in ecology” organised by Rachel.

Oscar’s talk, titled “The Importance of spatio-temporal modelling in Ecology” described the importance spatio-temporal models to understand the relationship between species in a common area. Oscar explains the problem caused due to the wolf eradication in Yellowstone National Park in 1920’s and how the landscape changed from this eradication to the reintroduction in 1990’s.

Alex’s talk, titled “Interaction point processes in spatially explicit capture-recapture models” described his work on a spatial capture-recapture model incorporating interactions within and between individuals of two species. The model relies on the theory of interaction point processes. As inference for these processes cannot be performed using standard techniques due to the intractability of the likelihood, specific MCMC methods have to be used. The model is applied to a capture-recapture data-set of leopards and tigers collected in India.