External Talks

• 2010, July. Co-presented five talks at the International Statistical Ecology Conference, Canterbery. (See also posters section, below)
• "Estimating population density from fixed passive acoustic detectors" L. Thomas and T. Marques
• "Effect of unmodelled heterogeneity upon abundance estimation using line and point transects." E. Rexstad, L. Thomas, D. Borchers, and S. Buckland
• "Investigating the efficiency of trapping point transects using a simulation study." J. Potts, L. Thomas, S. Buckland and A. Savage.
• "General animal movement and migration models using multi-state random walks." B. McClintock, R. King, J. Morales, J. Matthiopoulos and L. Thomas.
• "Estimating the abundance of whales using seabed-mounted hydrophone arrays." D. Harris, L. Thomas and J. Harwood.
• 2010, May. "What do I do?" University of Helsinki, Department of Mathematics.
• 2009, October. "A unified framework for modelling wildlife population dynamics in conservation and ecology." University of York, Department of Biology.
• 2009, September. "Spatially explicit capture-recapture methods to estimate minke whale abundance from data collected at bottom-mounted hydrophones." Marques, T.A., L. Thomas, S.W. Martin, D.K. Mellinger, S. Jarvis, N. DiMarzio and R.P. Morrissey. Talk given by David Borchers on behalf of Tiago at EURING 2009 technical meeting, Pescara, Italy.
• 2009, September. Co-presented 6 talks at the 1st International Workshop on Density Estimation of Marine Mammals Using Passive Acoustics in Pavia, Italy.
• "Review of methods for estimating cetacean density from passive acoustics." Len Thomas and Tiago Marques. [slides (pdf)]
• "Accounting for ambient noise in Blainville's beaked whales density estimation." Tiago Marques, Len Thomas, Jessica Ward, Len Thomas, Nancy DiMarzio, David Moretti and Peter Tyack.
• "Density estimation of Blainville's beaked whales from single hydrophones by means of propagation modeling." Elizabeth Küsel, David Mellinger, Len Thomas, Tiago Marques, David Moretti and Jessica Ward.
• "Passive acoustic density estimation of Blainville's beaked whales using group localization combined with click counting." Nancy DiMarzio, David Moretti, Jessica Ward, Ronald Morrissey, Susan Jarvis, Elena McCarthy, Mark Johnson, Peter Tyack, Diane Claridge, Charlotte Dunn, Tiago Marques and Len Thomas
• "Estimating the abundance of blue whales in the northern Indian Ocean using vocalizations recorded by sea-bed mounted hyrophones." Danielle Harris, Len Thomas, John Hildebrand, Sean Wiggins and John Harwood.
• "SAMBAH - Static acoustic monitoring of the Baltic Sea harbour porpoise. Mats Amundin, Ida Carlen, Julia Carlstrom, Jonas Teilmann, Len Thomas and Jacob Tougaard
• 2009, September. Co-presented 2 talks at the 4th International Workshop on Detection, Classification and Localization of Marine Mammals in Pavia, Italy.
• "Passive acoustic detection of Minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) off the West Coast of Kauai, Hi." Ronald Morrissey, Nancy DiMarzio, David Moretti, Steve Martin, David Mellinger, James Yosco, Carol Ciminello and Len Thomas
• "An algorithm for detection of whistles, moans, and other tonal sounds". David Mellinger, Steve Martin, James Yosco, Ronald Morrissey, Nancy DiMarzio, David Moretti and Len Thomas
• 2009, July. "Estimating the size of the UK grey seal population between 1984 and 2008:Standard and alternative approaches." L Thomas, J Harwood, M Longeran, D Thompson and C Duck. Special Committee on Seals, St Andrews, UK.
• 2009, July. Co-presented 6 talks at the Symposium on Estimating Cetacean Density from Passive Acoustics, July 16, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, USA.
• "Review of methods for estimating cetacean density from passive acoustics." Len Thomas and Tiago Marques. [slides (pdf)]
• "Estimating beaked whale density at AUTEC using tagged whale data." Tiago Marques, Jessica Ward, Len Thomas, Nancy DiMarzio, Peter Tyack, David Moretti and Stephen Martin. [slides (pdf)]
• "Estimating beaked whale density from single hydrophones by means of propagation modelling." Elizabeth Küsel, David Mellinger, Tiago Marques, Len Thomas, David Moretti and Jessica Ward. [slides (pdf)]
• "Density estimates from long-term autonomous recorders." John Hildebrand, Sean Wiggins, Lisa Munger, Mark McDonald and Len Thomas. [slides (pdf)]
• "Estimating whale abundance using sparse hydrophone arrays." Danielle Harris, Len Thomas and John Harwood. [slides (pdf)]
• "Estimating minke whale boing density at Pacific Missile Range Facility, Hawaii. Stephen Martin, Tiago Marques, Len Thomas, David Moretti, Ron Morrissey, Nancy DiMarzio, Susan Jarvis, David Mellinger and Tom Norris. [slides (pdf)]
• 2009, February. "Marine mammal monitoring: relevant research from St. Andrews." Monitoring workshop, February 19-20, Duke University, USA.
• 2008, October. Co-presented three talks at the Joint Industry Programme (JIP) on Exploration and Production, Sound and Marine Life Programme Review Meeting, October 28-31, Houston, USA.
• "DECAF: Density Estimation for Cetaceans from passive Acoustic Fixed sensors." Joint with members of the DECAF team [slides (pdf)]
• "Cetacean Stock Assessment in relation to exploration and production industry sound." Joint with SMRU Ltd..
• "Critical review of the literature on population modelling." Cabrelli, A., J. Harwood, J. Matthiopoulos and L. Thomas
• 2008, September. "Estimating the size of the UK grey seal population between 1984 and 2007." Special Committee on Seals, St Andrews, UK. [slides (pdf)]
• 2008, August. "How Many Are There?: Estimating the Size of Wild Primate Populations." Round table discussion at International Primatological Society XXII Congress, Edinburgh. [abstract (pdf)][slides of my talk (pdf)] If you would like a copy of Andy Plumptre's talk at this round table, please contact me.
• 2008, July. Co-presented several talks at the International Statistical Ecology Conference, St Andrews. (See also posters section, below)
• "Using Bayesian state space models of Northwest Atlantic Grey Seal population dynamics to estimate population size and optimal harvest strategies." L. Thomas, M. Hammill, W. Bowen.
• "A mixture model approach to distance sampling detection functions." D. Miller and L. Thomas.
• "Monte Carlo inference for state-space models of wild animal populations." C. Fernandez, K. Newman, L. Thomas, S. Buckland
• 2008, March. "How many animals?" - 1/2 day Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass (for high school students) with David Borchers, Joyce Yuan and Angelika Studeny. The following content is from our 2004 class. [schedule (pdf)] [slides and exercises (zip, contains Powerpoint and Word files - warning 21MB!] [abstract (pdf)] [slides (pdf)]
• 2007, October. "Preliminary estimates of the size of the Northwest Atlantic grey seal population 1977-2007." Canadian Stock Assessment Secretariat, Winnipeg, Canada. (Given via video conference.) [slides (pdf)]
• 2007, September. "A rationale for matching monitoring requirements with obligations to assess ecosystem effects." First author and presenter Simon Northridge. International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, Annual Science Conference, Helskinki.[abstract (pdf)]
• 2007, September. "Estimating the size of the UK grey seal population between 1984 and 2006." Special Committee on Seals, St Andrews, UK. [slides (pdf)](This was a short talk outlining some of our latest results on the seal modelling, given to members of the SCOS panel and others; a more complete overview of our work in this area is given in one of the talks below - e.g., the December 2006 CEH talk).
• 2007, June. "New methods for estimating marine mammal distribution, density and abundance." 2nd Intergovernmental Conference on the Effects of Sound in the Ocean on Marine Mammals, Lerici, Italy.
• 2007, May. "Sequential Monte Carlo methods to fit models of wildlife population dynamics." Statistics seminar series, University of Bath.
• 2007, May. Almost the same talk given the next day at the statistics seminar series, University of Bristol.
• 2007, March. "Bayesian methods for modelling wildlife population dynamics." Statistics seminar series, Department of Mathematical Sciences, Liverpool.
• 2007, January. (1) Co-chair for abundance estimation session. (2) "Distance 5: Mark-Recapture Distance Sampling" with Jeff Laake and David Borchers. EURING 2007 technical workshop, Dunedin, New Zealand.
• 2006, December. "How many animals?" - 1/2 day Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass (for high school students) with Steve Buckland, David Borchers and Joanne Potts.
• 2006, November. Invited speaker at CEH Applied Statistics Network, Edinburgh. (1) "Temporal inferences from ecological and environmental data." [slides of talk (pdf)] (2) "A unified ramework for mechanistic modelling of wild animal and plant population dynamics." [slides of talk (pdf)]
• 2006, November. "Use of Monte-Carlo particle filters to fit and compare models for the dynamics of wild animal populations." Workshop on Stochastic Computation for the Analysis of Ecological and Epidemiological Data, Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge.
• 2006, November. (1) "Overview of distance sampling." (2) "Fitting and comparing models of wildlife population dynamics." Workshop on "New directions in the estimation of landbird abundance from count data", co-organized by me, Jim Nichols and Paul Conn. Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, MD, USA.
• 2006, October. "Bayesian methods for modelling wildlife population dynamics." Statistics Seminar Series, Univeristy of Nottingham.
• 2006, October. "A unified framework for modelling wildlife population dynamics in conservation and ecology." Community Ecology Group, University of Sheffield.
• 2006, October. "Wildlife population assessment: the science (and statistics) behind the headlines." Organismal and Environmental Biology Seminar Series, University of Birmingham.
• 2006, July. "Use of Monte Carlo particle filters to fit and compare models for the dynamics of wild animal populations." Invited talk at the International Biometrics Conference, Montreal.
• 2006, June. "Bayesian methods for modelling wildlife population dynamics." Given at a meeting of the General Applications Section of the Royal Statistical Society on statistical ecology, London.
• 2005, September. "Monitoring Marine Mammals Using Passive Detector Arrays: A Statistical Perspective." Invited talk at Range Monitoring Workshop, Virginia.
• 2005, May. "Where are they? - Predicting the location of marine mammals." Written for workshop on "The Effects of Sound in the Ocean on Marine Mammals", La Spezia; John Harwood gave the talk.
• 2005, March. "Development of New Methods and Software for Distance Sampling Surveys of Cetacean Populations." Invited talk at second workshop on Environmental Consequences of Underwater Sound, Arlington, Virginia.
• 2004, November. "How many animals?" - 1/2 day Royal Institution Mathematics Masterclass (for high school students) with Steve Buckland, David Borchers and Tiago Marques.
• 2004, November "Use of sequential Monte-Carlo methods to fit and compare models for the dynamics of wild animal populations", given at Royal Statistical Society Highland local group meeting, Abderdeen.
• 2004, September. "Using particle filters to fit state-space models of wildlife population dynamics." Invited talk at NERC-EMS Workshop on Inference for Stochastic Population Models in Epidemiology and Ecology, Edinburgh.
• 2004, April. "Wildlife population assessment via distance sampling and the Distance software", given at the Wildlife Conservation Society, New York.
• 2003, October. Coauthor on "Integrated analysis of wildlife population dynamics", given by Byron Morgan at EURING 2003, Radolfzell, Germany.
• 2002, December. "A Unified Framework for Modelling Wildlife Population Dynamics." Contributed talk at 4th Conference on Statistics in Ecology and Environmental Monitoring, Dunedin, New Zealand.
• 2001, August. "Distance software: past, present and future." Contributed talk at International Conference on Distance Sampling, St Andrews.

Local Talks

• 2010, March. "What's Len working on?", given in CREEM seminar series.
• 2009, June. "Estimating whale density from their calls.", given at NCSE 2009 summer meeting.
• 2008, October. Repeat of talks given previous week in Houston, this time in the SMRU seminar series.
• "DECAF: Density Estimation for Cetaceans from passive Acoustic Fixed sensors." [slides (pdf)]
• "Cetacean Stock Assessment in relation to exploration and production industry sound."
• 2008, October. "Particle filtering seals: An update on modelling the population dynamics of grey seals", given in CREEM seminar series.[slides (pdf)]
• 2008, January. "Estimating cetacean population density using passive acoustics", given at SMRU Acoustics Meeting.
• 2007, February. "Report from EURING 2007 Technical Meeting: Latest research on capture-recapture and other ecological data", given in CREEM seminar series.
• 2006, May. "Tutorial: particle filters and state space models of wildlife population dynamics." Introductory talk given at 1st NCSE annual workshop. [slides (pdf)]
• 2006, February. "Digital seals: An overview and update on our attempts to model grey seal population dynamics." Talk given in Sea Mammal Research Unit lunchtime seminar series.
• 2006, January. "Punk meets Champetta: Counting Cotton-tops in Colombia." Joint work led by Dr. Anne Savage of Disney's Animal Kingdon and Proyecto Titi. Talk given in CREEM seminar series. [slides (pdf)] (To find out what Champetta is, turn your speakers up loud and click here.)
• 2004, June. "Designing a line transect survey of cetaceans in British Columbia", given in CREEM seminar series. [slides (pdf - warning 4MB!)]
• 2004, February. "State-space Models of British Grey Seal Population Dynamics", given at Centre for Conservation Science workshop, St Andrews.
• 2003, October. "Monitoring levels required in European Fisheries to assess cetacean bycatch." Joint work with Dr. Simon Northridge of SMRU, given in CREEM seminar series.

Posters

• 2010, September. "Counting Critters: Developing new ways to estimate wildlife population size." Given at networking lunch for Scottish Science Advisory Council, St Andrews. [poster (pdf)]
• 2010, July. Co-presented three posters at the 2010 International Statistical Ecology Conference, Canterbury. (See above for talks.)
• "Mark-recapture distance sampling in Distance." L. Burt, D. Borchers and L. Thomas.
• "A Bayesian approach to study the uncertainty generated by mis-classified detections in passive acoustic surveys of cetaceans." M. Caillat, L. Thomas, D. Gillespie and J. Harwood.
• "Horvitz-Thompson-like estimators with random-effects inclusion proability." Y. Yuan, D.L. Borchers, S.T. Buckland, J. Potts and L. Thomas.
• 2009, October. Co-authored two posters at the Society for Marine Mammology 18th Bienniel Conference, Quebec City
• "Seasonal patterns of blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) calls in the northern Indian Ocean - the first step to estimating abundance using vocalisations." D. Harris, L. Thomas, J. Hildebrand, S. Wiggins and J. Harwood.
• "Relating cetacean population trends to oil and gas E&P sound production." R. Jewell, L. Thomas, N. Quick, K. Macleod, K. Kaschner, G. Hastie and P. Hammond.
• 2009, March. "The Joint Cetacean Protocol: Setting standards for the integration and utilization of European cetacean distribution and abundance data." T. Dunn, L. Thomas, P. Evans, M. McMath, E. Sides, J. Reid, S. Northridge, D. Wall, C. Pierpoint, S. Berrow, E. Rogan, G. Burrows, D. Lyons and E. Pinn. Given at European Cetacean Soceity conference, Istanbul, Turkey.
• 2008, September. "Using particle filters to fit models for the dynamics of wild animal populations." L. Thomas, K. Newman, C. Fernandez and S. Buckland. Given at SAMSI Program on Sequential Monte Carlo Methods startup workshop, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA. [poster (pdf)]
• 2008, July. Co-presented several posters at the International Statistical Ecology Conference, St Andrews. (See above for talks.)
• "Automated survey design in Distance." L. Burt and L. Thomas.
• "Program Distance: Recent developments in analysis and design capabilities for plant and animal population estimation." L. Thomas, E. Rexstad, D. Borchers, S. Buckland, J. Laake.
• "Estimating abundance of the Key Largo woodrat." J. Potts, L. Thomas, S. Buckland, A. Savage.
• "Estimating cetacean density from passive acoustic arrays." T. Marques, L. Thomas. [Copy available at DECAF web site]
• 2007, January. (1) "Use of sequential Monte Carlo methods to fit state-space models for the dynamics of wildlife populations." [poster (pdf)] (2) "Embedding Population Dynamics In Mark-Recapture Models: A Conditional Approach." (Jon Bishop 1st Author). Given at EURING 2007, Dunedin, New Zealand.
• 2003, September. "Distance software development - integrated methods for the design and analysis of distance sampling surveys of wildlife", given at CREEM opening, St Andrews. [poster (pdf)]
• 2003, June. "A unified framework for modellling wildlife population dynamics", given at EURING 2003, Radolfzell, Germany.

Training workshops

• 2012, August. Advanced distance sampling with spatial modelling. St Andrews.
  • "Other approaches to DSM of distance sampling data, and future work." [slides (pdf)]
• 2012, August. Introduction to estimating density from passive acoustics. St Andrews.
• 2011, December. Introduction to distance sampling. Tampa, Florida, USA.
• 2011, September. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2011, September. Advanced distance sampling with spatial modelling. St Andrews.
• 2011, August. Tutorial on estimating marine mammal density from passive acoustics, Mount Hood, Oregon.
  • Link to more information about tutorial
• 2011, June. Primer on distance sampling. Arusha, Tanzania.
• 2011, June. Distance sampling survey design and analysis. Arusha, Tanzania.
• 2010, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2010, August. Advanced distance sampling with spatial modelling. St Andrews.
• 2010, July. Introduction to statistical modelling mini-workshop. NUWC, Newport, Rhode island.
• 2009, August. Advanced distance sampling with spatial modelling. St Andrews.
• 2009, July. Introduction to distance sampling. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, California, USA.
• 2008, September. Introduction to distance sampling. Marconi Center, Marin County, California, USA.
• 2008, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2008, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2008, August. Collection and analysis of field data for estimation of primate density or abundance. St Andrews.
• 2007, August. Density surface modelling. St Andrews.
• 2007, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2006, August. Density surface modelling. St Andrews.
• 2006, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2005, October. Counting critters: an introduction to estimating animal abundance and distance sampling. Orlando, Florida, USA.
• 2005, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2005, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2005, January. Introduction to distance sampling for Ornithologists. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA.
• 2004, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2004, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2004, April. Advanced distance sampling. Dorset, Ontario, Canada.
• 2004, April. Introduction to distance sampling. Dorset, Ontario, Canada.
• 2003, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2003, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2003, August. Estimating animal abundance. St Andrews.
• 2002, December. Distance sampling workshop. Christchurch, New Zealand.
• 2002, August. Advanced distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2002, August. Introduction to distance sampling. St Andrews.
• 2001, August. Distance sampling workshop. St Andrews.