Tag Archives: models

Just simple enough – an interesting new blog about biological modelling

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

I stumbled across this blog last week: Just Simple Enough: The Art of Mathematical Modelling. It discusses modelling in biology. Run by Amy Hurford, it is seemingly quite new, but already has several thought-provoking posts. For anyone interested in modelling, … Continue reading →

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A flurry of blogs on NHST

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

Perhaps people are always blogging about problems with the use of null hypothesis significance testing (HNST) in ecology, and I’ve just noticed. But there seems to have been a spate recently. There is a blog post about this at the … Continue reading →

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Interpreting non-detection when observations are imperfect

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

How long should you search before deciding that your target is absent? This is a problem that is fundamental to any ecological study that aims to determine the absence of a species. It will be important in studies of extinction, … Continue reading →

Posted in CEED, Detectability, Ecological models, NERP, New research, Probability and Bayesian analysis | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Evil p-values

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

A tweet just directed me to this older blog post by Bob O’Hara titled “Why P-values are Evil“. It is relevant to my previous post on Interpreting Variation in Data, and well worth reading.

Posted in CEED, Ecological models, NERP, Probability and Bayesian analysis | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Coextinction and recognition for unloved threatened species

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

I love this quote from Bob May (1986) – “to a good approximation, all species are insects”. Mark Burgman and David Lindenmayer’s (1998) book communicates that point beautifully, with an illustration by Kate Thompson in which the size of the … Continue reading →

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Building resilient ecosystems

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

Andrew Bennett and Dale Nimmo are hosting a forum on resilience at Deakin University on 12th April. The flyer for the event is here. Registration is essential if you wish to attend (see the flyer). The forum is titled “Building … Continue reading →

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Interpreting variation in data

Posted on February 25, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

This post examines the issue of scientific inference when using imprecise data, using two unrelated examples. The first is about whether cutting toes off frogs reduces their return rate, and the second examines the correlation between contemporary warming and CO2. … Continue reading →

Posted in CEED, Ecological models, Probability and Bayesian analysis | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Looking for a needle in a haystack – searching for hawkweeds

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Michael McCarthy

I’m in Falls Creek at the moment, with about 15 people from QAEG and other parts of Melbourne Uni. Cindy Hauser is running an experiment to detect hawkweeds, a major threat to the biodiversity in the Victorian Alps. How would … Continue reading →

Posted in Detectability, Ecological models, New research, Probability and Bayesian analysis | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

(Un)certainty of timber production

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Michael McCarthy

There is a new plan to provide longer term contracts for supplying timber from public native forests in Victoria. Part of this seems to involve moving responsibility for timber management from the Environment Minister to the Agriculture Minister. Some environment … Continue reading →

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Indices behaving badly

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Michael McCarthy

I have been thinking about indices in ecology and environmental science lately, partly because of concerns about the SAFE index. Indices are used for environmental monitoring, setting management priorities, and evaluating management actions. They are also found in basic ecology … Continue reading →

Posted in CEED, Ecological indices | Tagged , , | 4 Comments