The Department of Biological Sciences welcomes 

Dr. Guillaume Blanchet

Associate Professor, 

Department of Biology, University of Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada

Bias and Uncertainty in Ecological Models with a Perspective on Species Distribution

Understanding ecological systems is challenging because uncertainties often blur our perspective and limit our ability to make reliable predictions. These uncertainties generally fall into three main categories: process uncertainty, which stems from the biological complexity of the system itself; sampling uncertainty, which arises from the way we collect data; and model uncertainty, which reflects the assumptions and structure of the models we use. Beyond these inherent uncertainties, biases can further distort the ecological inferences we make. In this presentation, I will explore strategies to better account for both uncertainties and biases when applying statistical models to ecological systems. While these concepts have broad applications, I will illustrate them with examples focused on improving our understanding and prediction of tree and bird distributions.

Hosted by the Biological Sciences Graduate Students Association

This seminar will be streamed live. For a zoom link, please contact Dr. Eleni Gourgou at elenigourgou@wayne.edu.