Applied Hierarchical Modeling in Ecology : Analysis of Distribution, Abundance and Species Richness in R and BUGS: Dynamic and Advanced Models

Applied Hierarchical Modeling in Ecology: Analysis of Distribution, Abundance and Species Richness in R and BUGS, Volume Two: Dynamic and Advanced Models provides a synthesis of the state-of-the-art in hierarchical models for plant and animal distribution, also focusing on the complex and more advanced models currently available. The book explains all procedures in the context of hierarchical models that represent a unified approach to ecological research, thus taking the reader from design, through data collection, and into analyses using a very powerful way of synthesizing data.

• Makes ecological modeling accessible to people who are struggling to use complex or advanced modeling programs
• Synthesizes current ecological models and explains how they are inter-connected
• Contains numerous examples throughout the book, walking the reading through scenarios with both real and simulated data
• Provides an ideal resource for ecologists working in R software and in BUGS software for more flexible Bayesian analyses

Dr. Marc Kéry is a senior scientist at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, a non-profit NGO with about 200 employees dedicated primarily to bird research, monitoring, and conservation. Marc was trained as a plant population ecologist at the universities of Basel and Zürich, Switzerland. After a 2-year postdoc at the (then) USGS Patuxent Wildlife Center in Laurel, USA, he moved into animal population ecology and during the last 25 years has worked at the interface between population ecology, biodiversity monitoring, wildlife management, and applied statistics. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and six textbooks on applied statistical modeling. He has taught more than 60 one-week workshops all over the world to biologists and wildlife managers about the concepts and practice of modern statistical analysis in their fields, something which goes together with his books, which target the same audiences.

Dr Royle is a Senior Scientist and Research Statistician at the U.S. Geological Survey's Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. His research is focused on the application of probability and statistics to ecological problems, especially those related to animal sampling and demographic modeling. Much of his research over the last 10 years has been devoted to the development of methods illustrated in our new book. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 journal articles, and co-authored the books Spatial Capture Recapture, Hierarchical Modeling and Inference in Ecology and Occupancy Estimation and Modeling: Inferring Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence, all published by Academic Press.