From macroecology to on the ground monitoring: understanding population patterns and processes.

Dr Chris Carbone, Institut of Zoology, ZSL, London, UK

Ampitheatre Monge, 11AM

Abundance is one of the most important metrics we use to assess the status of animals in the wild not to mention to understand ecosystems and community function. In this talk I will present background work on macroecology (abundance scaling) and wildlife monitoring using camera traps. Surprisingly, some of the theoretical underpinnings used in both these fields are derived from simple gas models used in physics. The talk will review broad-scale patterns in population density across a diverse range of vertebrate species. I will then describe recent work on using camera-traps, a rapidly expanding field of research. I will briefly introduce the Random Encounter Model (REM) which allows us to estimate abundance and distributions of species which cannot be individually recognised. The REM also provides important opportunities to develop new behavioural metrics describing the impacts of humans on wild animal populations.

kc_data:

a:8:{i:0;s:0:"";s:4:"mode";s:0:"";s:3:"css";s:0:"";s:9:"max_width";s:0:"";s:7:"classes";s:0:"";s:9:"thumbnail";s:0:"";s:9:"collapsed";s:0:"";s:9:"optimized";s:0:"";}

kc_raw_content:

 

From macroecology to on the ground monitoring: understanding population patterns and processes.

Dr Chris Carbone, Institut of Zoology, ZSL, London, UK

Ampitheatre Monge, 11AM

Abundance is one of the most important metrics we use to assess the status of animals in the wild not to mention to understand ecosystems and community function. In this talk I will present background work on macroecology (abundance scaling) and wildlife monitoring using camera traps. Surprisingly, some of the theoretical underpinnings used in both these fields are derived from simple gas models used in physics. The talk will review broad-scale patterns in population density across a diverse range of vertebrate species. I will then describe recent work on using camera-traps, a rapidly expanding field of research. I will briefly introduce the Random Encounter Model (REM) which allows us to estimate abundance and distributions of species which cannot be individually recognised. The REM also provides important opportunities to develop new behavioural metrics describing the impacts of humans on wild animal populations.