Dr Peter Caley ‘On estimating waterbird abundance and trend across eastern Australia’

Abstract
Monitoring waterbird populations in Australia is challenging for reasons of counting logistics, and because population aggregation and dispersion can shift rapidly in response to large spatio-temporal variations in resource availability. In this talk I will present a modelling approach that attempts to address some of these challenges on the way to making sound inference on population trends. For many species, the year-to-year variation in the estimated proportion of the population on surveyed wetlands is very high. The results have implications for making inferences on population trends from these data, with the ability to model the year-to-year sampling variation a key requirement before the rate of population increase can be estimated with any precision. This study illustrates how to progress this approach, and infers that under average rainfall conditions, the general trend is for estimated superpopulation rates of increase to be negative, though for only a few species is this occurring with strong belief.

Biography
Peter is a research scientist with CSIRO Data61. He has a strong research record of applying quantitative methods to address contemporary problems in the environmental, agricultural and health sciences. He has an ongoing research interest in the dynamics of animal populations, with recent examples including inferring trends in the abundance of waterbird populations, flying foxes, and bogong moths.

Booking link: https://www.trybooking.com/COAWJ

Booking
Lunchtime talks are held at 12.30 pm every Thursday from February to November. Talks last for 1 hour. We welcome donations by gold coins, notes, or electronically. The Friends use donations received at each talk to support Gardens’ programs and development and we thank all those who have donated. 

Unless otherwise indicated, talks are held in the ANBG Theatrette.

It is a good idea to reserve a seat at the talks that you wish to attend; talks may be booked out very quickly.  Bookings can be made from about 30 days in advance until the night before the talk or until seating limits are reached. 

Booking link: https://www.trybooking.com/COAWJ

The Friends of the ANBG thank the speakers who volunteer their time and talents to further the knowledge of all attending events in the Gardens. Many summaries or PowerPoint presentations of Thursday talks are available to Friends at the ANBG library. Please direct queries about the talks to the Thursday Talks Team: email talks@friendsanbg.org.au.