Population Modeling in Ecology
Welcome to statistical modeling in population ecology! This online course introduces key software packages and fundamental models used in fish and wildlife population analysis. Course content includes the parameterization of models used to estimate ecological state variables such as occupancy and abundance as well as population vital rates such as survival, recruitment, and dispersal. The course is comprised of instructional videos with associated datasets and R code. To jump right into the video series, click 'Start Course' below to begin the course from the beginning, or search 'By topic' to skip to specific lessons. Further, please read the 'Additional Instructions' below on downloading/installing the software and packages required to execute the R scripts that accompany each lesson.
Instructor
Please email [email protected] with any questions, comments, or requests.
Video Lessons
Full playlist
By topic
Introduction to Population Analysis
Abundance: Closed Binomial N-mixture Model in unmarked
Abundance: Closed Binomial N-mixture Model in rjags
Abundance: Closed Population Estimation in RMark
Abundance: Open Binomial N-mixture Model in unmarked
Occupancy: Single-Season Occupancy Model in unmarked
Occupancy: Single-Season Occupancy Model in rjags
Occupancy: Multi-Season Occupancy Model in RMark
Survival: Cormack-Jolly-Seber Model in RMark
Recruitment: Robust Design Pradel Model in RMark
Dispersal: Robust Design Multi-state Model in RMark
Highlighting Underrepresented Works in Population Ecology and Analysis
Additional Instructions
Download and install the following programs for your platform:
R and RStudio Desktop
Program MARK and JAGS
Installing packages
Once you have R and RStudio set up on your device, install the following packages via pasting these commands into your prompt (i.e., copy and paste the code into the "Console" of RStudio and hit enter):
install.packages("unmarked")
install.packages("rjags")
install.packages("RMark")
install.packages("reshape")
install.packages("ggplot2")Downloading code/data from this repository
Simply click the Code dropdown button at the top-right of this page (scroll up to see it). Then hit Download ZIP in the dropdown menu. If you're not sure where to save it, just download and unzip to your Desktop.
Acknowledgments
This online course in population analysis was made possible through the funding of Wyoming NSF EPSCoR via the Microbial Ecology Collaborative. A huge thank you also to Western EcoSystems Technology, Inc. (WEST) and the University of Wyoming for hosting and supporting this project. Special thanks to Andrew Tredennick of WEST for supervision and feedback on each lesson and analysis.