Congratulations to Takis for Bilateral Exchange of Academics 2017 grant from German Academic Exchange Service.

Congratulations to Emily Dennis who received an “Honourable Mention” from the judges of the 2017 Young Biometrician’s Award, jointly run by the British & Irish Region of the International Biometric Society and the Fisher Memorial Trust. This was for her contribution to the 2016 Biometrics paper “A generalised abundance index for seasonal invertebrates”, which was written whist at the University of Kent. 

The panel comprised Professor R A Bailey, on behalf of the Fisher Memorial Trust, Dr G Hepworth from the University of Melbourne as international judge and Professor S G Thompson representing the British & Irish Region.

Congratulations to Anita Jeyam for passing her PhD viva with minor corrections. Her thesis is on New Diagnostic Tools for Capture-Recapture Models.

Congratulations to Natoya Jourdain for passing her PhD.

Natoya’s PhD was on New Analytical Methods for Camera Trap Data.

Abstract

Density estimation of terrestrial mammals has become increasingly important in ecology, and robust analytical tools are required to provide results that will guide wildlife management. This thesis concerns modelling encounters between unmarked animals and camera traps for density estimation. We explore Rowcliffe et al. (2008) Random Encounter Model (REM) developed for estimating density of species that cannot be identied to the individual level from camera trap data. We demonstrate how REM can be used within a maximum likelihood framework to estimate density of unmarked animals, motivated by the analysis of a data set from Whipsnade Wild Animal Park (WWAP), Bedfordshire, south England. The remainder of the thesis focuses on developing and evaluating extended Random Encounter Models, which describe the data in an integrated population modelling framework. We present a variety of approaches for modelling population abundance in an integrated Random Encounter Model (iREM), where complicating features are the variation in the encounters and animal species. An iREM is a more exible and robust parametric model compared with a nonparametric REM, which produces novel and meaningful parameters relating to density, accounting for the sampling variability in the parameters required for density estimation. The iREM model we propose can describe how abundance changes with diverse factors such as habitat type and climatic conditions. We develop models to account for induced-bias in the density  from faster moving animals, which are more likely to encounter camera traps, and address the independence assumption in integrated population models. The models we propose consider a functional relationship between a camera index and animal density and represent a step forward with respect to the current simplistic modeling approaches for abundance estimation of unmarked animals from camera trap data. We illustrate the application of the models proposed to a community of terrestrial mammals from a tropical moist forest at Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama.

From the 26th June to 29th June, at Kent we hosted the 7th NCSE summer meeting. We hosted 37 statisticians and ecologists from across the UK and beyond.

On Monday Byron gave a talk on a stochastic dynamic model for longitudinal butterfly data, Ming presented work on the use of penalised likelihood to improve estimation in removal models, Alex talked about a Polya Tree based model for counts of unmarked individuals in an open population and Eleni gave a talk on modelling temporary emigration using a Bayesian nonparametric changepoint process for capture-recapture data. On Tuesday  Diana presented work on problems with using data cloning to investigate identifiability. On Wednesday Marina talked about integrated population models incorporating spatial information and Takis presented work on estimation of roe deer population density in a mountainous Mediterranean area using hierarchical distance sampling. The full program of talks and abstracts can be found at http://tiny.cc/ncsemeeting.

On 23rd June the SE@K group hosted 110 school pupils in years 7 to 9 at the event Statistics Gone Wild.

The event started with an introduction, on counting animals, given by Diana, where each of the students were given animal cards representing one of the above six species. (More information on the research done on these six species is given here  http://blogs.kent.ac.uk/seak/2017/05/22/statistics-gone-wild-animals/)

There were then 3 interactive sessions:

–Capture-Recapture (throwing birds in the air) given by Alex;

–Occupancy Modelling (looking for hidden penguins) given by Marina;

–Removal Modelling (digging for lizards in the sand) given by Ming.

The day ended with an interactive quiz, given by Eleni.

Thank you to Joe Watkins for organizing and running the day, thank you to the 3 ambassadors, John, Kezia & Patrick, for their support throughout the day. And thank you to Kerry, Judith and Amy for their admin support.

Eleni gave a seminar on the 15th of March 2017 as part of the Ecology, Evolution and Environment seminar series at the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield.

Title: Modelling phenology for marked and unmarked populations

Abstract: In this seminar I will discuss fairly recent models for capture-recapture and for count data that enable us to estimate, among other things, phenology of wildlife populations. The methods explored will include classical as well as Bayesian parametric and non-parametric approaches. They will be demonstrated using data on breeding great crested newts, migrating reed warblers, bivoltine butterfly species , bumblebees from the citizen science scheme BeeWalk as well as data on anglers in Norway.