Eco-Stats has received over $9M in Australian Research Council funding since 2007 (see Research grants for details), and have published over 100 papers in international journals, including top journals in statistics, ecology, and biology (see Publications).
We’re always on the lookout for new and interesting projects! As our expertise is at the interface between statistics and ecology, we’re particularly interested in problems that straddle these two disciplines.
Multivariate abundance data are abundances collected simultaneously for many taxa (species, orders, functional groups…). This type of data is commonly collected in ecology and the environmental sciences, and has been collected and analysed in thousands of publications. There are many possibilities for significant contributions to this field, using a more rigorous model-based approach to analysis.
Current projects:
Species distribution modelling uses records of where a species is known to occur to model how it relates to a suite of environmental variables.
This may be done to better understand the ecology of the target species, to predict its response to environmental change, or to assist conservation efforts. The modelling process involves many challenging steps, and we are currently exploring the following problems:
Current projects:
We are interested in other challenging methodological problems too, at the interface between statistics (and machine learning) and ecology or related disciplines.
Current projects:
2024-26 ARC Discovery Project ($401,287)
Hui F, Menendez P, Warton DI, Woolley S & Foster S
“Modern statistical methods for clustering community ecology data”
2021-23 ARC Discovery Project ($410,000)
Warton DI & Stoklosa J
“Innovative statistical methods for analysing high-dimensional counts”
2020-25 Industrial Transformation Training Centres ($4,187,178)
Vervoort R, Warton DI & 30 others
“ARC Training Centre in Data Analytics for Resources and Environments (DARE)”
2019-23 NHMRC grant ($933,605.30)
Herbert R, Novak I, Rae C, Warton D, Bolsterlee B & Morgan C
“Muscle growth and muscle contracture in cerebral palsy”
2018-2020 ARC Discovery Project ($371,923)
Warton DI
“New insights from point event data in ecology”
2015-2018 ARC Linkage Project ($556,256.50)
Keith D, Phinn S, Elith, RJ, Warton DI & Connolly D
“Advancing vegetation classification and mapping to meet conservation needs”
2015-2017 ARC Discovery Project ($299,500)
Warton DI
“Advances in biodiversity modelling – analysis of high-dimensional counts”
2012-2016 ARC Future Fellowship ($622,856)
Warton DI
“Predicting the ecological impacts of climate change: advancing tools for the analysis of high-dimensional data in ecology”
2012-2014 ARC Discovery Project ($300,000)
Warton DI
“New approaches to predictive modelling of high-dimensional count data to study climate impacts on ecological communities”
2010-2013 ARC Linkage Grant ($401,000)
Ramp D, Warton DI, Jenkins KM, Ashcroft MB, Gollan JR & Driver P
“Innovative approaches to identifying regional responses of biodiversity to climate change”
2009-2011 ARC Discovery Project ($282,000)
Warton DI
“Advances in statistical methods for analysing high dimensional count data”
2009-2011 ARC Discovery Project ($300,000)
Warton DI, Andrew NR & Gibb H
“Predicting the effect of climate change on community structure and function: an assessment using temperate grassland invertebrates”
2007-2009 ARC Linkage Project ($450,000)
Kingsford RT, Laffan SW, Warton DI, Merson JA, Bradstock RA, Mulley R, Auld TD & Chapple RS
“Managing Ecosystem Change in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area”
