Regional workshops in wildlife research methods

In conjunction with WCS Malaysia Program, we have organised a number of 5-day workshops aimed at introducing young field biologists in SE Asia to current techniques in wildlife research. These were held at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur and participants have come from many countries in the region.

February 2012 - Species Distribution Modelling (SDM)

Dr Jane Elith and Dr Joanne Potts of University of Melbourne (Australia) led the workshop, which featured the use of R packages to prepare data sets and generation of models using both MaxEnt and regression methods, including Boosted Regression Trees (BRT). An outline schedule is here.

March 2011 - Wildlife density estimation with Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture (SECR)

Murray Efford of the University of Otago (NZ) introduced the theory of SECR and showed participants how to use his 'products', DENSITY and the 'secr' package. There was also a brief discussion of Bayesian analysis methods. Click here for an outline schedule.

March 2010 - Modeling Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence

Darryl MacKenzie of Proteus Wildlife Research Consultants presented the latest methods for modeling patterns and dynamics of species occurrence in a landscape while accounting for the imperfect detection of the species. Participants were introduced to the PRESENCE software package through worked examples. Topics included:

• single-season occupancy models for patterns in species occurrence
• multiple-season occupancy models for dynamic of species occurrence
• study design and it's influence on the interpretation of "occupancy"
• species co-occurrence models
• community-level applications
• multi-state occupancy models
• integrated modeling of habitat and species occurrence dynamics.

Updated 13 Feb 2012 by Mike Meredith