Data analysis: occupancy and co-occurrence using r scripts — Promaco Conventions

Data analysis: occupancy and co-occurrence using r scripts (#63)

Christopher Rota 1
  1. Wildlife and Fisheries Resources Program, School of Natural Resources, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

An objective of many camera trapping studies is to understand factors that influence the probability a species will occur at a location in space.  Interspecific interactions can strongly influence how animals use space, and camera traps allow us to record detection / non-detection of many species within ecological communities.  Recent advancements in occupancy modeling techniques have allowed scientists to simultaneously evaluate how both environmental factors and interspecific interactions influence the probability a suite of species will occur at a location in space.  This workshop session will introduce users to recently developed multi-species occupancy models.  We will first discuss basic sample design issues and identify how to properly format data for analyses.  We will then outline a modeling strategy that proceeds by fitting sequentially more complex models of species interactions.  Throughout, we will illustrate how to fit multi-species occupancy models within the R environment and will share code used to conduct example analyses with workshop participants.

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