Gentle Introduction to Occupancy Modeling

Are you interested in understanding where species occur and why they occur there? Do you think about the limitations of our wildlife surveys? If we set out a camera trap and never detect a jaguar, was it ever there? I guess it depends! Was the camera on a trail? Was the camera out for three days or three months? Did we survey our protected forest patch with 2 cameras or 200 cameras? Was it the rainy season or the dry season? Were there poachers in the area or abundant prey? These are all the types of important questions we should be asking when we think about what drives species distributions and how to better detect, predict, and inform conservation actions. Over the years, I have taught several quantitative ecology workshops — particularly occupancy analyses — in an effort to teach students how to develop research questions, collect and analyze data to answer pressing questions in wildlife ecology and conservation. I was recently inspired by the awesome showing of #BlackMammalogistsWeek and I kept thinking about ways that I could help make mammalogy and ecology more accessible to historically underrepresented groups in STEM, especially BIPOC students. In an effort to make science more accessible to students starting out on their research journeys, I have recorded a recent occupancy workshop that I gave via zoom to the University of Central Oklahoma (organized by my MS adviser Dr. Vicki Jackson). Those four short modules are available on my YouTube channel and they are free to share and hopefully useful for students to get started on their own exciting ecological research. Furthermore, If you are a professor or professional and you would have paid for this free content, then I encourage you to donate to the Black Mammalogists Week BIPOC Scholarship Fund here. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions and I hope these modules and content find you well!