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Full-Text Articles in Applied Statistics

Statistical Improvements For Ecological Learning About Spatial Processes, Gaetan L. Dupont Oct 2021

Statistical Improvements For Ecological Learning About Spatial Processes, Gaetan L. Dupont

Masters Theses

Ecological inquiry is rooted fundamentally in understanding population abundance, both to develop theory and improve conservation outcomes. Despite this importance, estimating abundance is difficult due to the imperfect detection of individuals in a sample population. Further, accounting for space can provide more biologically realistic inference, shifting the focus from abundance to density and encouraging the exploration of spatial processes. To address these challenges, Spatial Capture-Recapture (“SCR”) has emerged as the most prominent method for estimating density reliably. The SCR model is conceptually straightforward: it combines a spatial model of detection with a point process model of the spatial distribution of …


Monitoring Mammals At Multiple Scales: Case Studies From Carnivore Communities, Kadambari Devarajan Oct 2021

Monitoring Mammals At Multiple Scales: Case Studies From Carnivore Communities, Kadambari Devarajan

Doctoral Dissertations

Carnivores are distributed widely and threatened by habitat loss, poaching, climate change, and disease. They are considered integral to ecosystem function through their direct and indirect interactions with species at different trophic levels. Given the importance of carnivores, it is of high conservation priority to understand the processes driving carnivore assemblages in different systems. It is thus essential to determine the abiotic and biotic drivers of carnivore community composition at different spatial scales and address the following questions: (i) What factors influence carnivore community composition and diversity? (ii) How do the factors influencing carnivore communities vary across spatial and temporal …


Robust Optimization Of Biological Protocols, Patrick Flaherty, Ronald W. Davis Jan 2015

Robust Optimization Of Biological Protocols, Patrick Flaherty, Ronald W. Davis

Mathematics and Statistics Department Faculty Publication Series

When conducting high-throughput biological experiments, it is often necessary to develop a protocol that is both inexpensive and robust. Standard approaches are either not cost-effective or arrive at an optimized protocol that is sensitive to experimental variations. Here, we describe a novel approach that directly minimizes the cost of the protocol while ensuring the protocol is robust to experimental variation. Our approach uses a risk-averse conditional value-at-risk criterion in a robust parameter design framework. We demonstrate this approach on a polymerase chain reaction protocol and show that our improved protocol is less expensive than the standard protocol and more robust …