Vivas

Chen Yu’s Viva

Congratulation to Chen Yu, who passed his viva with minor corrections on 27th May. Chen’s project, The Use of Mixture Models in Capture-Recapture, was supervised by Byron Morgan and Diana Cole.

Abstract
Mixture models have been widely used to model heterogeneity. In this thesis,
we focus on the use of mixture models in capture{recapture, for both closed
populations and open populations. We provide both practical and theoretical
investigations. A new model is proposed for closed populations and the practical
diculties of model tting for mixture models are demonstrated for open
populations. As the number of model parameters can increase with the number
of mixture components, whether we can estimate all of the parameters using
the method of maximum likelihood is an important issue. We explore this
using formal methods and develop general rules to ensure that all parameters
are estimable.

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Vivas

Emily Dennis PhD Viva

Congratulation to Emily Dennis who passed her Viva on 27th May. Her project, on Development of statistical methods for monitoring insect abundance, was supervised by Byron Morgan and Martin Ridout.

Abstract

During a time of habitat loss, climate change and loss of biodiversity, efficient analytical tools are vital for population monitoring. This thesis concerns the modelling of butterflies, whose populations are undergoing various changes in abundance, range, phenology and voltinism. In particular, three-quarters of UK butterfly species have shown declines in their distribution, abundance, or both over a ten-year period. As the most comprehensively monitored insect taxon, known to respond rapidly and sensitively to change, butterflies are particularly valuable, but devising methods that can be fitted to large data sets is challenging and they can be computer intensive. We use occupancy models to formulate occupancy maps and novel regional indices, which will allow for improved reporting of changes in butterfly distributions. The remainder of the thesis focuses on models for count data. We show that the popular N-mixture model can sometimes produce infinite estimates of abundance and describe the equivalence of multivariate Poisson and negative-binomial models. We then present a variety of approaches for modelling butterfly abundance, where complicating features are the seasonal nature of the counts and variation among species. A generalised abundance index is very efficient compared to generalised additive models, which are currently used for annual reporting, and new parametric descriptions of seasonal variation produce novel and meaningful parameters relating to phenology and survival. We develop dynamic models which explicitly model dependence between broods and years. These new models will improve our understanding of the complex processes and drivers underlying changes in butterfly populations.

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