Keynote speakers

Jane Elith is an academic in the School of BioSciences at the University of Melbourne.  She specialises in species distribution models, statistical models that describe relationships between the occurrence or abundance of species and the environment. She is interested both in technical aspects of the models and their adaptation to typically available data, and also in their applications. These types of models are used by scientists, agencies and local interest groups to inform many aspects of species management, including understanding current distributions of threatened species, predicting how distributions might change in future, supporting threat management, and controlling invasive species. Since these models are used worldwide and often by conservation practitioners in projects with small budgets, issues of data and code availability are key to widespread applicability and robust development of predictions.