Track: Workshop
Judy Che-Castaldo
Conservation and Science, Lincoln Park Zoo
Chicago, IL, USA
This workshop will introduce attendees to the open-access COMPADRE and COMADRE matrix population model (MPM) repositories (http://www.compadre-db.org), which contain thousands of MPMs compiled from the literature for hundreds of plant and animal species. Open-access repositories like COMPADRE and COMADRE facilitate novel research at local to global scales by connecting ecologists, managers, and other stakeholders to collaborative datasets too large to compile by a single person or team. This workshop covers the web interface, submission to the repositories, and demographic analyses using MPMs in R and applying those analyses to real datasets. MPMs describe the dynamics of a population in discrete time by presenting survival and fecundity rates for each life history stage for a population (e.g., age classes, size classes, developmental stages) and can be used to calculate many demographic metrics including life expectancy, stage-specific reproductive values, and the most important stage(s) to population growth. MPMs can also be used to compare species management strategies in population viability analyses (PVAs). Attendees will apply these skills in a set of exercises to obtain and analyze MPM data from the repositories, with an emphasis on comparative analyses of life history and population biology. This workshop is aimed at a wide audience (e.g., students, professors, wildlife managers) interested in learning about life history trait data, stage-structured demography, and comparative methods in demographic research. Attendees are expected to have at least introductory-level skills in R and to bring their own laptop with the most up-to-date version of R pre-installed.