Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists: A Bayesian approach to regression, ANOVA, mixed models and related analyses - Softcover

Kery, Marc

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0123786053 ISBN 13: 9780123786050

Publisher: Academic Press, 2010

Synopsis

Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists introduces applied Bayesian modeling to ecologists using the highly acclaimed, free WinBUGS software. It offers an understanding of statistical models as abstract representations of the various processes that give rise to a data set. Such an understanding is basic to the development of inference models tailored to specific sampling and ecological scenarios. The book begins by presenting the advantages of a Bayesian approach to statistics and introducing the WinBUGS software. It reviews the four most common statistical distributions: the normal, the uniform, the binomial, and the Poisson. It describes the two different kinds of analysis of variance (ANOVA): one-way and two- or multiway. It looks at the general linear model, or ANCOVA, in R and WinBUGS. It introduces generalized linear model (GLM), i.e, the extension of the normal linear model to allow error distributions other than the normal. The GLM is then extended contain additional sources of random variation to become a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) for a Poisson example and for a binomial example. The final two chapters showcase two fairly novel and nonstandard versions of a GLMM. The first is the site-occupancy model for species distributions; the second is the binomial (or N-) mixture model for estimation and modeling of abundance.

About this title

About the Author

Dr. Marc Kéry is a senior scientist at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, a non-profit NGO with about 200 employees dedicated primarily to bird research, monitoring, and conservation. Marc was trained as a plant population ecologist at the universities of Basel and Zürich, Switzerland. After a 2-year postdoc at the (then) USGS Patuxent Wildlife Center in Laurel, USA, he moved into animal population ecology and during the last 25 years has worked at the interface between population ecology, biodiversity monitoring, wildlife management, and applied statistics. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and six textbooks on applied statistical modeling. He has taught more than 60 one-week workshops all over the world to biologists and wildlife managers about the concepts and practice of modern statistical analysis in their fields, something which goes together with his books, which target the same audiences.

From the Back Cover

Introduction to WINbugs for Ecologists is an introduction to Bayesian statistical modeling, written for ecologists by an ecologist, using the widely available WinBUGS package. Examples are placed within a comprehensive and largely non-mathematical overview of linear, generalized linear (GLM), mixed and generalized linear mixed models (GLMM). This book will be of interest to any quantitative scientist who uses regression-type models, especially ecologists, agronomists, geologists, epidemiologists, sociologists, and psychologists. This book:

• Teaches by example rather than by equations.
• Contains examples based on simulated data along with fully commented R code for the generation of these data sets.
• Is full integrated with program R―all analyses are conducted by calling program WinBUGS from within program R.

Dr. Kéry is a population ecologist with the Swiss Ornithological Institute. He is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles on a wide range of topics, including the analysis of large-scale monitoring programs, demographic population analyses, experimental design for animal and plant surveys, and the population ecology of rare species.

Edition details

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0123786053
• ISBN 13: 9780123786050
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320