Simulation of home range placement and within home range resource selection with connectivity constraints for availability. Assuming the road is narrow relative to grid res and animals can spend time in road cells if they contain good habitat, just are less likely to cross them.

In the weeds here, but the corrected algorithm is still not a correct Gibbs sampler. They need to update w_i,j after updating a z_i,j so that the full conditional is correct when updating the subsequent z_i,j's, but they don't.

Multivariate Probit occupancy model explored recently by Dorazio et al. works much better than initially presented. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Exploring impact of search effort resolution for Royle-Young model. How accurate does it need to be? In this scenario, probably 1sigma or less. 2sigma only -4% bias, not bad. 4sigma -8%

One thing regular SCR does not account for is if you have a hard boundary like hab mask, detection probability should generally go up inside the hab mask if the detection function extends beyond it. Ignoring this can introduce false individual heterogeneity in p. Proper RSF model is one solution.

We are recruiting several PhD students. If you are interested in conservation conflicts, population ecology, quantitative ecology, or biodiversity, check these projects out (links in the thread, feel free to reach out):

Passing those posterior predictive checks

Recently came across this Dorazio et al. paper showing that parameter expansion can make probit multispecies occupancy models much more efficient to sample. besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... I wanted to learn a new trick so I made a nimble version. github.com/benaug/Probi...

Today I learned that people will just remove individuals with large home range sizes from their SCR analyses and not tell anyone

COME WORK WITH ME!!! Very exciting open faculty position at MIT, with ecosystem and biodiversity modeling as a focus! cee.mit.edu/people/share...

TIL that the slice sampler in jags can't handle unbounded support so jags uses MH that adds/subtracts 1 integer at a time to update latent poisson RVs etc. 🤯 Nimble FTW again.

added a more rigorous explanation of my N-prior data augmentation approach

I was today years old when I noticed that Bayesian p-values for SCR models with data augmentation arbitrarily depend on the level of data augmentation because the simulated test statistic is always greater than or equal to the observed test statistic when z_i=0. Has anyone pointed this out before?

Lazy Coding Sunday

The Royle-Young SCR model never saw much use, in fact I'm not sure if anyone used it outside of the original paper. Maybe bc it was too basic to be widely applicable and making it more flexible required the flexibility of nimble. Anyways, excited about an application that might start its comeback.

After all the study planning, field work, model development/ refinement, and computation--Behold! the posterior distribution

Incorporating habitat selection does not account for nonrandom camera deployment in a design-based viewshed density estimator https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.08.22.671559v1

All the cool quantitative ecology jobs are postdocs

Thinking about all of my US colleagues today that work for USGS, USFWS, US Parks Service, NOAA and the EPA. From front line environmental practitioners to scientists and policy makers, these folks ensure that waters are swimmable, fish are edible, that natural areas are accessible, etc, etc, etc.

Matern Type III repulsive point processes in NIMBLE. Pretty cool approach and does not require a birth-death process for estimation, so it is fast and mixes well. Can add SCR observation model. github.com/benaug/Mater...

Fun with multimodal posteriors

Can't believe no one thought to make rules about skinning bears in the dorm kitchen 😂 www.cornellsun.com/article/2025...

Got generalized Matern Type III thinning process for point repulsion working using data augmentation. Cool approach, but pretty slow.

Term extended for a full year. Whew!

Figured out how this data augmentation approach to is related to that presented by Schofield and Barker (2014). Theirs can be specified with bugs code, which is very slick! As coded, mine runs 2x as fast with better ESS/iteration. Cool stuff. More formal details soon. github.com/benaug/SCR-N...

Setting up final run for SMRing ground squirrels. Mb for marking process, negative binomial for sighting process, both sex-specific.

I have two moods, "everything is cool" and "there is a bug in my code". Everything is cool again.

It's Term Renewal Day! Do I still have a job? Who knows! Not my supervisors.

The WildCo Lab @wildco.bsky.social is recruiting 2 postdocs in quantitative ecology to work on mammal population estimation and monitoring from camera trap data. 🐺🐻🦌📷📈 Please share the word or apply to join us at UBC in lovely Vancouver, Canada! wildlife.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2025/0...

The overdispersion is strong in the SMR data set

The "Marginal Unmarked Trilogy" github.com/benaug/Unmar... github.com/benaug/Rando... github.com/benaug/Spati...

Spent 3 hours looking for a bug in my code or algorithm today, gave up to go mow the grass, then figured it out there. 😆

Marginal version of SMR with interspersed marking and sighting and all sample types is pretty slick.

Split out all my SMR models marginalizing over latent IDs with Herliansyah et al. (2024) efficiency trick into their own repository. Premarked, interspersed marking/sighting, natural marks. single and multi session, Dcovs, habitat masks. Count prior data augmentation. github.com/benaug/Spati...

Top 5 things I want to write up from my Github repositories. Someone hire me for a while and we can pump these out. Will describe some more later.

😂

Put some more work into the data augmentation approach I've been using. Have 3 ways to do the N/z updates now. I think "count prior data augmentation" is a good name for it (besides data benaugmentation 😆). I've sloppily said this is RJMCMC sometimes in the past, but it is def data augmentation.

I am looking for a postdoc position! I have experience in host-parasite interactions, animal behavior, sexual selection, science outreach, and science education. Plus, I'm a photographer and illustrator which could come in handy! Please reach out if you have any positions open or know someone.

A few months until the end of my postdoc contract. Norway has defunded a good part of the academic system, so opportunities are limited. I will try to apply for my own funding, but pending potential failure, if someone has a job opportunity that might suit me I would be happy to have a chat!

🐆🐆 Aaaaand we have another M.S. position available!! This position represents an opportunity to study ocelot genomics in the context of an active reintroduction effort. Deadline is June 1 for an August start 🐆🐆 Position posting is here: shorturl.at/o4dTA

🐆🐆 TWO M.S. POSITIONS AVAILABLE IN MY LAB!! Focus will be bobcat and coyote dynamics in an ocelot pre-reintroduction landscape. Come join the fun. Deadline is June 1 for an August start 🐆🐆 Position posting is here: tinyurl.com/5y3uhbf3

This looks promising approach for repulsion between individuals based on space use overlap instead of distance. Generalized Matern Type III Process thins a Poisson point process as a function of space use overlap, where space use is BVN.

We are hiring a chair/professor in our Ecology and Environmental Modelling group at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social. Scotland is a lovely place to work, and my colleagues are fantastic! Reach out if you are interested in joining the CREEM family ☺️ vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/I/...

For those of you who do any type of ecology stats consulting, how do you find clients? I'm considering switching to my LLC full time after my next postdoc ends, but the uncertainty of income leaves me a little nervous. Any tips?

Pop simulator with habitat and density effects on reproduction, survival, and movement. Females only. Grey indicates 95% HR. Survival: red dots adult deaths, gold, 1 or more dependent deaths. Movement, red is adult HR relocation, gold subadult dispersal. Reproduction: gold indicates a new litter.

Last call for expressions of interest in a Quantitative Ecology post-doc based mostly in South Africa. If you are interested, drop Lourens and me a line 👇 www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/jaxqx...

We are hiring an Assistant/Associate Prof of Quantitative Ecology! I'm on the Search Committee for this one. If you have any interest in the position & want to learn more about living in this v. cool part of the country, pls reach out! tinyurl.com/2h6bdece

Now have multi catch and single catch traps using competing hazards observation model. M0, Mb with and without spatial density covariates github.com/benaug/SCR_S...