🚨 New preprint!

Have you ever wondered if we can detect disease in wildlife just by looking at their movement?

We show how hidden Markov models can link animal trajectories to infection states — tested on reintroduced scimitar-horned oryx and simulated data.
👉 arxiv.org/abs/2509.21132

The hmmTMB paper is finally out in the Journal of Statistical Software!

An R package for hidden Markov models with random effects, flexible spline-based covariate effects, and fast inference using TMB or Stan.

Check out the GIthub repository for more examples.

doi.org/10.18637/jss...

Like to develop spatio-temporal models? Interested in Arctic marine mammals 🦭🐳 and their susceptibility to oil spills? You may be the postdoctoral fellow Dr. Mariane Marcoux and I are looking for! See the details in the job ad: tinyurl.com/spatiostatamm

History-changing day for labour relations at @dalhousieu.bsky.social. Lockout of faculty could begin as early as Wed morning. Rest assured, DFA members are ready for what is about to happen. #keepdalstrong @cupe3912.bsky.social @nsgeu.bsky.social @ansut.bsky.social @caut.bsky.social

New PhD position in our group! Join us to study gull foraging ecology at sea using GPS and accelerometry data! You will be working here Amsterdam Movement Ecology group under supervision of @judyshamounb.bsky.social, @rooskentie.bsky.social and me. Apply here werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

The world is on 🔥 -- and here's my first publication in an astronomy journal: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

We combine Gaussian processes + hidden Markov models to efficiently detect stellar flares in one modelling step. 🧪

All my ecology peeps slinging the GAM(M)s might find this paper interesting. I was surprised to learn there is a frequentist interpretation of GAM(M)s! (jk) besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Sina Mews, Roland Langrock, and I have updated 🆕 our review paper!
It offers a comprehensive overview on choosing the right time ⏰ and space 📏 formulation for latent Markov models, providing a unifying perspective on discrete- and continuous-time HMMs, SSMs and MMPPs.

👉 arxiv.org/abs/2406.19157

Animal movement workshop alert! A line of speakers difficult to beat with John Fieberg, Marie Auger-Méthé, Brett McClintock & Inês Silva and the location is definitely a place that makes you "move" for it: lovely Madeira. 19-23 May 2025. Just after the ECS in Azores. It's PT islands 2025. See you?

Updated vignette on Bayesian inference for hidden Markov models with hmmTMB: specifying priors, extracting posterior samples, visualising posterior uncertainty for estimated distributions and covariate-parameter relationships, etc.

Based on Stan, so it's pretty fast too!

github.com/TheoMichelot...

Recently discovered a fun webpage called Probability Playground where you can interactively explore probability distributions.

It’s helpful especially for distributions with parameters that are not immediately intuitive. Very cool!

www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~adamcunn/pr...

Here are some thoughts on teaching #statistics to non-statistical students, specifically those in #applied #ecology degrees. Thanks to Will Kay and Tiago Marques for an enjoyable (and not last) collaboration.
You can access the PDF here 👉 tinyurl.com/33keh22s

Going to test out the power of new followers! Does anyone here (or do you know anyone who) teach statistics (specifically GLMs) to primarily ecology/evolution/bio students and would be willing to potentially review a book proposal?