Bayesian Population Analysis using WinBUGS: A Hierarchical Perspective - Softcover

Kéry, Marc; Schaub, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0123870208 ISBN 13: 9780123870209

Publisher: Academic Press, 2011

Synopsis

Bayesian statistics has exploded into biology and its sub-disciplines, such as ecology, over the past decade. The free software program WinBUGS, and its open-source sister OpenBugs, is currently the only flexible and general-purpose program available with which the average ecologist can conduct standard and non-standard Bayesian statistics.

• Comprehensive and richly commented examples illustrate a wide range of models that are most relevant to the research of a modern population ecologist
• All WinBUGS/OpenBUGS analyses are completely integrated in software R
• Includes complete documentation of all R and WinBUGS code required to conduct analyses and shows all the necessary steps from having the data in a text file out of Excel to interpreting and processing the output from WinBUGS in R

About this title

From the Back Cover

Bayesian Population Analysis using WinBUGS is an introduction to the analysis of distribution, abundance, and population dynamics of animals and plants using hierarchical models implemented in the leading Bayesian software WinBUGS. It will be of interest to quantitative scientists working in the fields of population ecology, conservation biology, evolutionary biology, population management, disease ecology, fisheries or wildlife biology. The accessible text is ideal for self-study and advanced graduate-level courses.

This book:

• Is a statistical modeling book written by ecologists for ecologists
• Contains analyses of simulated data, along with fully commented R code for the generation of these data sets, as well as analyses of real data
• Fully integrates with program R―all analyses are conducted by calling WinBUGS from R
• Illustrates the tremendous modeling freedom given to ecologists when using the simple and flexible BUGS language

Marc Kéry and Michael Schaub are population ecologists with the Swiss Ornithological Institute. Together, they have authored over 120 peer-reviewed journal articles on a wide range of topics, including the analysis of large-scale monitoring programs, demographic population analyses, experimental design for animal and plant surveys, and the population ecology of rare species, as well as Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists (Academic Press, 2010).

About the Author

Dr Kery is a Population Ecologist with the Swiss Ornithological Institute and a courtesy professor ("Privatdozent") at the University of Zürich/Switzerland, from where he received his PhD in Ecology in 2000. He is an expert in the estimation and modeling of abundance, distribution and species richness in "metapopulation designs" (i.e., collections of replicate sites). For most of his work, he uses the Bayesian model fitting software BUGS and JAGS, about which he has published two books with Academic Press (2010 and 2012). He has authored/coauthored 70 peer-reviewed articles and four book chapters. Since 2007, and for a total of 103 days, he has taught 23 statistical modeling workshops about the methods in the proposed book at research institutes and universities all over the world.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0123870208
• ISBN 13: 9780123870209
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 554