TWS 2024 Conference

[Christen Fleming]

Dear all,

We will be giving a full-day Introduction to continuous-time movement modeling for animal tracking data workshop at this year's TWS annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland on Sunday, October 20th from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM. All proceeds will go towards the TWS Spatial Ecology and Telemetry Working Group.

Early bird registration ends July 14th: https://twsconference.org/

I will also be giving a talk on integrating tracking data with camera-trap data in ctmm:

Presentation Title: Data Integration Methods for Modeling Habitat Suitability with Animal-Tracking and Camera-Trap Data
Session: Spatial Ecology and Modeling II
Session type: Contributed Oral
Presentation Time: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 from 4:00 PM - 4:15 PM*

Abstract:
Animal-tracking and camera-trap data offer complementary strengths and weaknesses for modeling habitat suitability, abundance, and connectivity, though the two data modalities have sometimes been reported to provide conflicting estimates of suitability when used independently. While camera-trap data are more abundant, they are restricted to a small number of fixed locations and generally have unknown detectabilities and encounter rates. In contrast, animal-tracking data can thoroughly sample from each tracked individual's home range, but they require a more careful treatment of temporal autocorrelation and a hierarchical model linking individual to population space use. Here, we describe some generalizations of integrated models using the inhomogeneous Poisson point-process framework that can address these challenges, and, thereby, leverage each data source to offset the weaknesses of the others. We apply these methods to a system with both tracking and camera-trap data on the same species, where we can evaluate the added benefit of varying quantities of each data type. In conclusion, some amount of each is useful.

Best,

Chris

[Tyler Hodges]

I'm excited to attend both, thanks Chris!