Spatially explicit capture-recapture with R

Workshop in association with 2014 International Statistical Ecology Conference

This training workshop is aimed at scientists whose field research requires them to estimate the size or density of animal populations from spatially referenced detections, and at statisticians interested to learn more about these methods.

Participants will be introduced to SECR theory, and to methods for model fitting using maximum likelihood. They will learn how to arrange data for analysis, fit models with the R packages secr and admbsecr, and interpret the results. Experience with R is highly desirable. Topics to be addressed include: detection functions; temporal, spatial and individual covariates of detection; model selection; multi-session analyses; study design; ancillary data from telemetry or sound recording; and spatial trend in density. Field examples will be used throughout. The workshop will also survey recent developments in SECR, including continuous-time SECR models and methods for acoustic data.