Speaker: David Delaney, Graduate Student, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University

Title: Distance Sampling: Methods For Estimating The Abundance of Unmarked Animals

Abstract: I will give an overview of how distance sampling works, and we’ll work through an example analysis using the R package Distance. We’ll discuss some of the model assumptions that my study system (deer in Iowa) violates and how we can handle these issues using a Bayesian hierarchical framework using JAGS (jagsUI). In particular, we’ll explore how to calculate an accurate detection probability when the viewable sampling area covaries with distance from the observer. Check the GitHub repo Friday morning for R code if you’d like to follow along; we’ll simulate the data for analysis.