Spatial modelling of Scottish marine fauna.

This fully-funded PhD will develop and apply innovative statistical methods to model the spatial distribution and abundance of selected Marine fauna species, from survey data. Marine fauna is surveyed in a wide variety of ways around Scotland for management and conservation purposes. This includes visual surveys from ships, visual and camera-based surveys from aircraft, visual surveys from shore-based platforms, acoustic surveys with stationary hydrophones, acoustic surveys with towed hydrophones, and trawl surveys. The PhD will focus on a selection of surveys and species, depending on the candidate’s interest, Marine Scotland Science priorities, and suitable data availability, in order to adapt and develop existing statistical methods and software to obtain the best possible estimates of the spatial distribution of species occupancy and/or abundance of the selected species from these data.

It is anticipated that the PhD will build on the methods developed a recent EPSCR-funded project that developed the inlabru software and associated methods (see https://sites.google.com/inlabru.org/inlabru.)

Candidates should have the equivalent of a 2.1 undergraduate degree in statistics or a related subject and an interest in ecology, or a 2.1 undergraduate degree in ecology or a related subject and have statistical training at undergraduate level or equivalent experience.

The student will be located in the world-leading Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM: http://creem2.st-andrews.ac.uk) while at the University of St Andrews. The student will spend a period of research at the University of Edinburgh and/or Marine Science Scotland during the PhD.