Michael J Noonan

Assistant Professor

Biology, Statistics

Office: SCI 379
Phone: 250.807.8667
Email: michael.noonan@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Animal movement, conservation, encounter theory, evolutionary processes, macro-ecology, and statistical ecology.

Courses & Teaching

Evolutionary Ecology (Biol 417); Statistical Modelling for Biological Data (Biol 520C); Spatial Statistics (DATA 589)

Biography

Dr. Noonan is a quantitative ecologist with more than a decade of research experience across 3 countries and 5 institutions. His research program is aimed at disentangling complex and nuanced biological patterns from statistical bias, and at developing statistical methods and software for handling the unique challenges posed by ecological data.

Degrees

DPhil, University of Oxford; BSc Concordia University

Research Interests & Projects

The Quantitative Ecology Lab is focused on the statistically efficient integration of ecological data into evidence-based conservation. The lab’s work is structured around two separate, but complementary, lines of research. The first falls under an umbrella termed ‘Biology or bias’, and is aimed at developing novel statistical methods, understanding when/why different analytical approaches lead to differing conclusions, and how to avoid estimation bias. The over-arching theme of this work is to demonstrate how the use of biased estimators and/or incorrect statistical procedures can generate misinformative results that weaken both ecological theory and evidence-based conservation initiatives. The second focuses on macro-ecology and species conservation by pairing high quality data with cutting edge analytical tools.

Selected Publications & Presentations

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