Course Overview: Marxan (Ian Ball and Hugh Possingham, 2000) is a software program used to support the design of marine and terrestrial reserves.  Marxan is now used by over 6000 people in 150 countries, making it the most the most widely used conservation planning tool in the world. In simple terms, Marxan analyzes scientific and geographic data to help users allocate space in ways that maximize values such as biodiversity, land value, cultural significance, and economic productivity whilst minimizing cost.…

Course Overview: Spatial modelling is increasingly being used in ecology and evolutionary biology for both basic and applied research questions. While emphasis traditionally has been on species-level niche modelling, the increasing availability of genomic and community-level data has increased interest in modelling biodiversity patterns above and below the species level. This 5-day course will provide a thorough introduction to different spatial modelling techniques for quantifying and visualizing patterns of biodiversity across scales of biological organization - from population-level genetic variation,…

Course Overview: The course will describe recent methods (concepts and R tools) that can be used to analyse spatial patterns in community ecology. The umbrella concept of the course is beta diversity, which is the spatial variation of communities. These methods are applicable to all types of communities (bacteria, plants, animals) sampled along transects, regular grids or irregularly distributed sites. The new methods, collectively referred to as spatial eigen-function analysis, are grounded into techniques commonly used by community ecologists, which…

Course Overview: The course will deal with different aspects related to the use of remote sensing and GIS in spatial ecology by using the Free and Open Source Software GRASS GIS coupled with R. By the end of this 5-day practical course, attendees will have the capacity to deal with ecological patterns and processes by using GIS and remote sensing algorithms. The increasing availability of open ecological and geographical data through networks such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF,…

This course is being provided through a collaboration of PR statistics and Proteus and will be delivered by Dr. Darryl MacKenzie Course Overview: The presence or absence of a species across a set of landscape units is a fundamental concept widely used in ecology (e.g., species range or distribution, epidemiology, habitat modeling, resource selection probability functions, as a monitoring metric, metapopulation studies, biodiversity and species co-occurrence). An important sampling issue, however, is that a species may not always be detected…

Course Overview: This course will cover time series analysis with a particular focus on applications in ecology. All methods will be illustrated using the free, open-source software package R. The course is designed for attendees that have a basic knowledge of R and elementary statistics but not necessarily time series. Time Series data are ubiquitous in the physical sciences, and models for their behaviour enable scientists to understand temporal dynamics and predict future values. The course will cover a range…

Course Overview: This course will cover introductory mixed or hierarchical modelling (fixed and random effects models) for real-world data sets from both a Frequentist and Bayesian perspective. These methods lie at the forefront of statistics research and are a vital tool in the scientist’s toolbox. The course focuses on introducing concepts and demonstrating good practice in mixed modelling. All methods are demonstrated with data sets which participants can run themselves. Participants will be taught how to fit hierarchical models using both the standard lme4…

Course Overview: Phylogenetic comparative methods are commonly used nowadays to investigate how species diversification occurs and to test hypotheses about the mechanisms that drive phenotypic evolution, e.g. to model speciation and extinction, to understand why some groups are more diverse than others, to test whether phenotypic traits have evolved under neutral, directional or diversifying selection, to investigate how evolutionary rates are modified across the evolutionary history of a group etc. In all these cases, a phylogenetic hypothesis for the group…

Course Overview: The course will describe different aspects and methods in the field of functional ecology, combining theoretical lessons with hands-on real data. Lectures will provide the theoretical and mathematical basis for different applications of functional traits at organismal, community and ecosystem levels, with examples across different trophic levels. This will serve as a basis for exploring the practical tools to connect the effect of land-use and climate change on biodiversity to the effect of biodiversity on to multiple ecosystem…

Course Overview: Survival analysis is a set of statistical methods initially designed to analyse data giving the times at which individuals die, and assess the effect that different predictor variables have on the rate of death. However, its applications are much broader than this: it can be used to analyse any time-to-event data. Ecologists and evolutionary biologists often encounter data of this kind. Often factors influencing survival itself will be of interest. But there are many other cases, e.g. what…

Course Overview: This course will provide an introduction to working with real-life data typical of those encountered in the field of evolutionary biology and ecology. The course will be delivered by Dr. Luc Bussiere, Dr. Tom Houslay and Dr. Ane Timenes Laugen who are all practicing academics in the field of evolutionary biology.  This five day course will consist of series of modules (each lasting roughly half a day) covering model selection and simplification, generalised linear models, mixed effects models,  and non-linear models. Along…

Course Overview: Acoustic telemetry has become increasingly popular as a method of choice for monitoring the movements and behaviour of aquatic animals globally.  Increasingly smaller tags along with improvements in battery technology have allowed for tagging a wide variety of species and life stages, enabling monitoring of individuals as small as salmon smolts and as large as whale sharks for periods from 30 days to 10 years.  Receiver technology also continues to evolve and increasingly allows for data to be…

Course Overview: The course will cover the concepts, technology and software tools that can be used to analyse movement data (from ringing/CMR to VHF/GPS to novel biologging data) in ecology and evolution, covering analysis techniques applicable broadly to most taxa, from micro-organisms to plants and animals. We will cover elementary and advanced analysis and modelling techniques broadly applicable across taxa, highlighting the advantages of a unified Movement Ecology framework. We will provide the necessary bases in ecology (especially behavioural ecology),…

Course Overview: The course will cover the base theory of ecological niche modelling and its main methodologies. By the end of this 5-day practical course, attendees will have the capacity to perform ecological niche models and understand their results, as well as to choose and apply the correct methodology depending on the aim of their type of study and data. Ecological niche, species distribution, habitat distribution, or climatic envelope models are different names for similar mechanistic or correlative models, empirical…

Course Overview: The term ‘landscape genetics’ has been applied studies that integrate ecological context and intervening landscape into population genetic analyses of contemporary processes such as gene flow and migration.  This course will cover the basics of both quantitative landscape ecology and population genetics, focusing on how we develop and evaluate spatial/genetic analyses using the R platform. Intended Audience This course is suitable for graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and primary investigators interested in learning how to integrate landscape ecological and…

Course Overview: This course will provide an introduction to working with real-life data typical of those encountered in the field of psychology. The course will be delivered by Dr. Dale Barr and Dr. Luc Bussière, who are practicing academics in the fields of psychology and evolutionary biology respectively, with many years of expertise with R and statistical modelling as both scientists and instructors.  This five-day course will consist of series of modules (each lasting roughly half a day) covering topics including the…

Course Overview: This workshop will provide attendees with the opportunity to learn how (1) to understand; (2) run simulations of readily available Individual Based Models (IBMs); (3) analyze the outputs of IBMs; (4) parameterize IBMs, and (5) code relatively basic IBMs in R and NetLogo. Examples and applications will include cases from diverse domains and scientific disciplines such as social sciences, biology, and environmental sciences. Intended Audience This workshop is ideal for any scientists seeking an introduction as well as…