June 28: Anne Chao - a new class of measures of phylogenetic diversity

Last cab off the rank is Anne Chao and her 2010 Royal Society B paper with Chun-Huo Chiu and Lou Jost: "Phylogenetic diversity measures based on Hill numbers".

We will discuss this Friday (28th) at 2.

June 21: Will Cornwell - Measuring phylogenetic diversity

Next up is Will Cornwell, who I'm delighted to say will be taking up an appointment here at UNSW in just a few weeks.  He has diverse interests which include the measurement of functional and phylogenetic diversity, which will be the focus of the session he will speak in at the Symposium.  He has suggested the following introductory book chapter which we will discuss next Friday:
Vellend, Cornwell et al (2011) "Measuring phylogenetic diversity" from the book Biological diversity: frontiers in measurement and assessment, Oxford University Press.

No reading for Friday June 14

There's a lot going on at UNSW this week so we've decided to postpone the next reading until June 21.  So all you Will Cornwell/phylogenetic diversity fans will have to wait a week...

June 7: Noel Cressie - Bayesian Hierarchical ANOVA for Climate Change Projections

Next up is Noel Cressie, an expert in spatial statistics who was written two incredibly thorough and detailed textbooks on the subject. His recent focus is on Bayesian hierarchical approaches for modelling spatial data. He has suggested the following paper as being particularly relevant for his talk:

Bayesian Hierarchical ANOVA of Regional Climate-Change Projections from NARCCAP Phase II

There is a fair amount of equations in the paper, but please don't let this be a deterrent! Noel recently gave a talk on this work at UNSW and as an attendee, I can say that it was incredibly exciting and very approachable for non-statisticians.

Feel free to post any questions or comments here in anticipation of the study group at 2-3pm on Friday at UNSW.

May 31: Chris Daly - Guidelines for Assessing the Suitability of Spatial Climate Data Sets

The next speaker is Chris Daly, the renowned developer of the PRISM spatial climate modelling system. His work has earned him the 2004 Applied Meteorology Award from the American Meteorological Society.

We will discuss his 2006 paper: "Guidelines for assessing the suitability of spatial climate data sets", which can be found at the link below:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1322/abstract

Feel free to post any questions or comments in advance of or during the discussion at UNSW at 2pm on Friday!

May 24: Shirley Pledger - Using Mixture Models to Model Abundance from Capture-Recapture Studies

Our next speaker is Shirley Pledger, an expert in capture-recapture analysis. She has suggested the following article explaining the use of mixture models to model abundance in the face of differing capture/re-capture probabilities:

http://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bimj.200810446/abstract

Feel free to post any questions or comments in advance of the discussion group meeting at 2-3 on the 24th of May.

May 17: Gerry Quinn - Impact of Agriculture Land Use on Invertebrates in Intermittent Streams Using a Multivariate Approach

Our next speaker is Gerry Quinn, a marine ecologist who has contributed to many textbooks in wide use today. We’ll discuss a recent paper as a glimpse into how multivariate analysis is currently being applied to ecological problems, in particular on the impact of agricultural land use on invertebrates in intermittent streams. Here is a link to the article:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00027-012-0273-4

Hope to hear from you in the blogosphere in time for the meeting on Friday at 2.