Dr Ben Courtney Stevenson

PhD, University of St Andrews

Lecturer

In: Statistics » Faculty of Science

Biography

I completed BSc (Hons) and MSc degrees at the University of Auckland before moving to the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, where I graduated with a PhD in 2016. I remained at St Andrews for a twelve-month research fellowship, joining this department in January 2017.

Please see my personal webpage for further information.

Research | Current

I develop statistical methods and software to estimate ecological parameters of interest, usually animal abundance or density. My recent work has met statistical challenges that arise when instruments like microphones, video-cameras, and drones are deployed to detect animals on wildlife surveys. New technologies have the potential to collect mountains of data at a low cost, but complicate estimation of ecological parameters because less information is encoded within each detection. For example, we can easily identify an individual on a live-trapping survey via a securely fixed ID tag, but perhaps cannot do so from a fleeting glimpse in a video.

I have additional research interests in spatial point processes, statistical computing, and applied statistics in general. My work in these areas sometimes overlaps with ecology, but has also led to publications in the fields of medicine and veterinary science.

Teaching | Current

Semester 2, 2020: STATS 10X

Semester 1, 2021: STATS 399
Semester 2, 2021: STATS 399

Postgraduate supervision

To see a list of available available projects, click here. Some of these may not yet appear on the department's list.

Current students:

PhD

Edy Setyawan
Investigating the movement ecology, feeding behaviour, and genetic structure of a meta-population of reef manta rays Mobula alfredi in Raja Ampat, Indonesia
Cosupervisors: Rochelle Constantine (School of Biological Sciences), Mark Erdmann (Conservation International), and Malcom Francis (NIWA)

Pei (Zoe) Luo
Two-phase subsampling designs for DNA sequencing, with an application to the relatedness in endangered species
Cosupervisor: Thomas Lumley

David Chan
Advancing spatial capture-recapture methods for acoustic surveys of cetacean populations
Cosupervisor: Rachel Fewster

Markus Gronwald
Behaviour of invasive rat species in low population densities on islands
Cosupervisor: James Russell

Areas of expertise

Ecological statistics, capture-recapture, statistical computing, spatial point processes.

Selected publications and creative works (Research Outputs)

Samaniego, A., Griffiths, R., Gronwald, M., Holmes, N. D., Oppel, S., Stevenson, B. C., & Russell, J. C. (2020). Risks posed by rat reproduction and diet to eradications on tropical islands. BIOLOGICAL INVASIONS, 22 (4), 1365-1378. 10.1007/s10530-019-02188-2
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/50621
Other University of Auckland co-authors: James Russell
Jones-Todd, C. M., Caie, P., Illian, J. B., Stevenson, B. C., Savage, A., Harrison, D. J., & Bown, J. L. (2019). Identifying prognostic structural features in tissue sections of colon cancer patients using point pattern analysis. Statistics in medicine, 38 (8), 1421-1441. 10.1002/sim.8046
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Charlotte Jones-Todd
Stevenson, B. C., Borchers, D. L., & Fewster, R. M. (2019). Cluster capture-recapture to account for identification uncertainty on aerial surveys of animal populations. Biometrics, 75 (1), 326-336. 10.1111/biom.12983
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Rachel Fewster
Baron, H. R., Leung, K. C. L., Stevenson, B. C., Sabater Gonzalez, M., & Phalen, D. N. (2018). Evidence of amphotericin B resistance in Macrorhabdus ornithogaster in Australian cage-birds. Medical Mycology, 57 (4), 421-428. 10.1093/mmy/myy062
Measey, G. J., Stevenson, B. C., Scott, T., Altwegg, R., & Borchers, D. L. (2017). Counting chirps: Acoustic monitoring of cryptic frogs. Journal of Applied Ecology, 54 (3), 894-902. 10.1111/1365-2664.12810
Kidney, D., Rawson, B. M., Borchers, D. L., Stevenson, B. C., Marques, T. A., & Thomas, L. (2016). An efficient acoustic density estimation method with human detectors applied to gibbons in Cambodia. PLoS ONE, 11 (5)10.1371/journal.pone.0155066
Fewster, R. M., Stevenson, B. C., & Borchers, D. L. (2016). Trace-contrast models for capture–recapture without capture histories. Statistical Science, 31 (2), 245-258. 10.1214/16-STS551
Other University of Auckland co-authors: Rachel Fewster
Borchers, D. L., Stevenson, B. C., Kidney, D., Thomas, L., & Marques, T. A. (2015). A Unifying Model for Capture–Recapture and Distance Sampling Surveys of Wildlife Populations. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 110 (509), 195-204. 10.1080/01621459.2014.893884