I am a Graduate Statistician and PhD student at the Lancaster STOR-i Centre for Doctoral Training. Before returning to full-time study, I worked as a Mathematics teacher in a Sixth Form college and later as a tutor at Manchester Metropolitan University.
My PhD project is in collaboration with one of the CDT’s strategic partners, University College Dublin, and is motivated by data provided by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). The project will develop new statistical models for avian population monitoring data. BTO collects capture-recapture data from volunteers who use mist nets to harmlessly capture and ring birds, as part of a long running monitoring programme of common UK resident breeding birds, called the Constant Effort Scheme (CES). Avian population monitoring provides valuable evidence of the general health of UK wildlife, and is informative to conservation efforts, as these populations are affected by the pressures of climate change, habitat loss and pesticide use. Moreover, capture-recapture data are ecologically important because they enable estimation of key demographic parameters such as abundance and survival. This project will develop models for the CES data which account for spatial correlation across the multiple CES sites which span the British Isles. Further, the capture-recapture data are currently aggregated to an annual level, and so a further aim of the project is to develop models which utilise the information from within-season recaptures to provide insight into transience and population growth.