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EURING
Newsletter - Volume 3 - July 2001
EURING
2000 CONFERENCE
by David R Anderson
COLORADO COOPERATIVE
FISH & WILDLIFE RESEARCH UNIT
201 WAGAR BUILDING, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
FORT COLLINS, COLORADO 80523-1484 USA
E-mail: anderson@picea.cnr.colostate.edu
Approximately
80 biologists and biometricians from many parts of the world met
at the Morconi Center in central California for EURING 2000. The
week-long scientific conference began on Monday, October 2 with
a full day of short courses. These courses provided background information
on 10 topics. These sessions where chosen to allow integration into
the main conference themes. The short courses have become a vital
component of the recent EURING meetings and allow people the catch
up on new material and ask for clarification before the main conference
starts.
The 7 half-day
scientific sessions started on Tuesday and concluded at noon on
Saturday, with a full day of field trips on Thursday. The themes
of the 7 scientific sessions were -
1. Evolutionary
Biology
2. Modeling and Inference Using Individual Covariates
3. Bayesian Methods
4. Random Effects Models
5. Meta-populations, Multi-strata Models, Dispersal, Translocations
6. Formal Experiments with Ringer Birds
7. Direct Estimation of Lambda (finite population growth rate).
Each of the
scientific sessions began with a plenary address and these were
followed by 1 or 2 formal discussants. The remaining papers related
directly to the seesion theme. Ample time for discussion followed
nearly all papers.
Excellent posters
were displayed during a special Poster Session during the conference.
These posters were not 'rejected papers' but, rather, material that
could best be presented as a poster. This session also allowed a
maximum of interaction between the poster presenters and the rest
of the people attending the conference.
Conference editors
are working with reviewers with the hope of getting the full proceedings
published in about one year. This is a large, but very important,
undertaking. Everyone seemed to come away with new ideas and problems
in need of solution.
The provision
of a summary of the highest of the highlights is premature as the
proceedings are yet to appear. Sessions 1-7 are all at the current
state of the science. Everyone learned a great deal from the session
on Bayesian methods and EURING 2003 will surely see more reports
using this paradigm. The direct estimation of the finite rate of
population growth is still in its infancy and will see more work
on this exciting issue. I felt people were very interested in the
concept of 'random effects' models and the notion of variance components.
Few of us think hard enough to achieve a clean, formal experiment
and the session of experiments sharpened perspectives on this fundamental
issue. The session on evolutionary biology was very important (and
placed first on the program). In the end, these issues are the important
ones. This session spoke more to biology and less on methods and
we need to maintain some balance in the EURING conferences.
I thank ALL
that helped make EURING 2000 a very successful scientific meeting.
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