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Modelling Occupancy
My involvement with occupancy studies is mainly through supervising the PhD of Gurutzeta Guillera-Arroita, jointly with Byron Morgan.
Occupancy studies aim to estimate the proportion of sites occupied by a species, using data from surveys that try to detect the presence of the species. The species may not be detected even when it is present and some form of repeated sampling is used to estimate the probability of detection. Occupancy studies are used widely in ecology and conservation.
Guru has worked on two main issues relating to occupancy:
- the design of occupancy studies, including the design of single-season studies (Ref [1]).
- new models to estimate occupancy from species detection data collected along transects, motivated by a study of the Sumatran tiger (Panthera tigris sumatrae) which followed this type of sampling protocol. The models (Refs [2] and [3]) describe the detection process as a continuous point process and can account for clustering and/or abundance-induced heterogeneity in the detection process.
References
[1] Gurutzeta G-A., Ridout, M.S. and Morgan, B.J.T. (2010) Design of occupancy studies with imperfect detection. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 1, 131-139. [Journal link] [SODA software (Matlab)]
[2] Guillera-Arroita, G., Ridout, M.S. Morgan, B.J.T., and Linkie, M. (2011) Species occupancy modelling for detection data collected along a transect. Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, 16, 301-317, [Journal link]
[3] Guillera-Arroita, G., Ridout, M.S. Morgan, B.J.T., and Linkie, M. (2012) Models for species-detection data collected along transects in the presence of abundance-induced heterogeneity and clustering in the detection process. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 3, 358-367. [Journal link]
