About me

I am a statistical ecologist based in the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) at the University of St Andrews. CREEM is nominally divided up into research units, and some of my work is within the Research Unit for Wildlife Population Assessment (RUWPA). I am also part of the National Centre for Statistical Ecology (NCSE) and Scottish Oceans Institute (SOI).

There are two main strands to my work:

• Use of computer intensive methods to fit and compare stochastic models of wildlife population dynamics. I mostly work on algorithms called particle filters.
  Here is an accessible article about some of this work.
• Development of methods and software for estimating the size, density and distribution of wild animal and plant populations. I mostly work on a group of related methods called distance sampling.
  Here is a poster giving an accessible overview of some of this work.
  Here is an introductory article on distance sampling.

Further information

Outputs

• Publications and (p)reprints
• Talks and posters
• Software to download

Teaching

• MT3607: Computing in Statistics. Co-taught with Eric Rexstad. Next class will be Semester 1 (i.e. Sept-Dec) 2013.
  • Course description (on School web pages)
• International training workshops in distance sampling and wildlife abundance estimation.
  • See CREEM workshops page for dates and venues.

Students and Postdocs

• Internal
• Marjolaine Caillat (Biology and Statistics). Assessing and correcting for the effects of species misclassification in acoustic surveys of cetaceans.
• Rebecca Jewell (Biology). Modelling cetacean dive behaviour and density, and relating spatio-temporal trends in density to anthropogenic activities.
• David Moretti (Biology). Determining the effect of Mid-Frequency Active (MFA) sonar on the fitness of Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) in the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO).
• Nancy DiMarzio (Biology). Distribution, habitat use and movements of Blainville’s beaked whales in the Tongue of the Ocean (TOTO).
• Rocio Gonzalez (Statistics). Animal movement and distance sampling.
• External
• James Lawrence (Statistical Laboratory, Univ. Cambridge). Trans-dimensional sequential importance sampling for model averaging, with application to Bayesian state-space models of wildlife population dynamics.
• Goldie Philips (Nichols School of the Environment, Duke University). Passive Acoustics: A Tool for Abundance Estimation, Predictive Habitat Modeling, and the Examination of Noise Effects on Bottlenose Dolphin Communication Signals.

• Tiago Marques. LATTE - Linking Acoustic Tests and Tagging using statistical Estimation: modeling the behavior of beaked whales in response to mid-frequency active sonar.
• Danielle Harris. Cheap DECAF -- Developing cost effective methods for Density Estimation from Acoustic Fixed sensors.
• Rob Schick. PCADs - Population consequence of acoustic disturbance.
• Dina Sadykova. MOCHA - Multi-study Ocean acoustics Human effects Analysis.
• Stacy DeRuiter. MOCHA.
• Catriona Harris. PCADs and MOCHA.

Research