Article,
‘Exciting statistics’: the rapid development and promising future of hierarchical models for population ecology
Animal Conservation, 15 (2): 133--135 (March 2012)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-1795.2012.00540.x
Abstract
Many biologists might indeed find statistics dull or even terrifying (van Emden, 2008), but ecologists and wildlife biologists should be downright ecstatic with recent developments in statistical modeling. One of the most exciting advances in recent decades is the development of hierarchical models. Hierarchical or multi-level models are becoming increasingly common in population analysis, and with good reason. Indeed, Kéry & Schaub (2011) devote much of their final chapter to the ‘Power and Beauty of Hierarchical Models’, and among the many virtues they list for hierarchical models are simpler fitting of complex models, clarity of thinking about these models and a ‘step-up’ approach to model building (Kéry & Schaub, 2011). Simpler and clearer model construction is an important advantage of hierarchical models, and although this may be reason enough to choose a hierarchical approach to modeling ecological data, the benefits do not stop with the fitting of the model to data.
