Video: Phil talks about our research on detectability and species distribution models!

A couple of months ago, José Lahoz-Monfort, Brendan Wintle and I published a paper in Global Ecology and Biogeography about the impact of imperfect detection in species distribution models (SDMs). Our paper shows how imperfect detection affects the performance of SDMs in different ways depending on the correlation between occupancy and detectability. It also highlights that the relevance of accounting for detectability cannot be judged based on how models perform in predicting observations. If detectability is ignored, a model may not do a good job estimating the distribution of a species (the interesting bit!), even if it predicts observations well.

Well, I do not want to bore you with details: you can find the paper here, and a related article in Decision Point Issue #77 (reproduced in a QAECO blogpost). But I thought I should highlight that our friend, manager Phil, has recorded a video explaining how thinking about detectability helped him in one of his projects. So, if you feel like sitting back and relaxing for a few minutes, why not checking it out?

(*note you can change the settings to high resolution)

As a bonus, some funny moments in the making of Phil’s video:

and to finish, a couple of pics:

The whole team

 

Recording the video