Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists: Bayesian Approach to Regression, ANOVA, Mixed Models and Related Analyses

Marc Kéry

Jul 2010 · Academic Press

About this ebook

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.

• Introduction to the essential theories of key models used by ecologists
• Complete juxtaposition of classical analyses in R and Bayesian analysis of the same models in WinBUGS
• Provides every detail of R and WinBUGS code required to conduct all analyses
• Companion Web Appendix that contains all code contained in the book and additional material (including more code and solutions to exercises)

Ratings and reviews

I'm currently a PhD candidate in reptile ecology. During the past nine years of under-graduate and post-graduate studies I've attended four courses in statistics and two in population theory. Marc Kery's "Introduction to WinBUGS for Ecologists" didn't just introduce me to WinBUGS in a ecologically-accessible way, it also succeeded in doing what my previous courses in statistics had failed to do - it successfully explained and demonstrated the power of linear modeling for an ecologist such as myself. Apart from the firm theoretical grounding that the book supplied me, the author's examples, including detailed R code, have made it possible for me to write, run and explain custom linear models using a program that I never knew existed just nine months ago. In his introduction to the book, the author writes, "Owing to its gentle tutorial style, this book should be excellent to teach yourself. I hope that you can learn much about Bayesian analysis using WinBUGS and about linear statistical models and their generalizations by simply reading it. However, the most effective way to do this obviously is by sitting at a computer and working through all examples, as well as by solving the exercises." Having read all chapters and worked through many of the examples, I can confirm that the book has succeeded in my case. If you know a little bit of R, and nothing about WinBUGS, then I recommend this book.

WORST APP EVER!!!😠😠😠😠😠

About the author

Dr. Marc works as a senior scientist at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, Seerose 1, 6204 Sempach, Switzerland. This is a non-profit NGO with about 160 employees dedicated primarily to bird research, monitoring, and conservation. Marc was trained as a plant population ecologist at the Swiss Universities of Basel and Zuerich. After a 2-year postdoc at the (then) USGS Patuxent Wildlife Center in Laurel, MD. During the last 20 years he has worked at the interface between population ecology, biodiversity monitoring, wildlife management, and statistics. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and five textbooks on applied statistical modeling. He has also been very active in teaching fellow biologists and wildlife managers the concepts and tools of modern statistical analysis in their fields in workshops all over the world, something which goes together with his books, which target the same audiences.