Applied Hierarchical Modeling in Ecology: Analysis of distribution, abundance and species richness in R and BUGS

Dr. Marc works as a senior scientist at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, Seerose 1, 6204 Sempach, Switzerland. This is a non-profit NGO with about 160 employees dedicated primarily to bird research, monitoring, and conservation. Marc was trained as a plant population ecologist at the Swiss Universities of Basel and Zuerich. After a 2-year postdoc at the (then) USGS Patuxent Wildlife Center in Laurel, MD. During the last 20 years he has worked at the interface between population ecology, biodiversity monitoring, wildlife management, and statistics. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and five textbooks on applied statistical modeling. He has also been very active in teaching fellow biologists and wildlife managers the concepts and tools of modern statistical analysis in their fields in workshops all over the world, 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.

• PrefacePart 1: Prelude1. Distribution, abundance and species richness in ecology2. What are hierarchical models and how do we analyse them ?3. Linear models, generalized linear models (GLMs), and random-effects: the components of hierarchical models4. Introduction to data simulation5. The Bayesian modeling software BUGS and JAGSPart 2: Models for static systems6. Modeling abundance using binomial N-mixture models7. Modeling abundance using multinomial N-mixture models8. Modeling abundance using hierarchical distance sampling9. Advanced hierarchical distance sampling10. Modeling distribution and occurrence using site-occupancy models11. Community models (incidence- and abundance-based)

"For the beginning practitioner of hierarchical models,...this is definitely worth the space and may actually be the first place to start developing a strong fundamental understanding of hierarchical modeling. For more seasoned quantitative ecologists, there are lots of useful modeling details for both the unmarked and BUGS/JAGS syntax,...there is value to having it all in one place. Finally, for professors looking to teach a class or short-course on hierarchical models in ecology,...an excellent text for the course." course." --Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics