Institute Seminar | Jorge Fernando Saraiva de Menezes | 2022-12-06 | 2/2 Discussion
Channel: CASUS.science
Date: 09/12/2022

TITLE: Foraging ecology in the age of big data by Dr. Jorge Fernando Saraiva de Menezes, Center for Advanced Systems Understanding CASUS

Jorge holds a PhD in Ecology, and has four years of experience working as a research associate in projects both in academia and governmental institutions. In addition to foraging ecology, he is interested in applying machine learning methods and new movement models to conservation biology.

ABSTRACT:
Foraging ecology is a relatively unknown but powerful theoretical discipline in ecology. It conceptualizes animals as relentless energy consumers, and models their actions as attempts to maximize their reproductive success, their fitness. With those simplifying assumptions, and the extensive use of optimization and game-theoretical methods, it generates some of the few “successful” predictive models in ecological theory. Despite its mild success, the wide use of this theory and the refining of these models seems to been held back by the difficulties in acquiring sufficient data to test it.

In this talk, Jorge will introduce some of the classical methods for generating and testing foraging models, illustrated by his own work on the subject. He will also bring up the topic of how two trending ecological disciplines may provide the data that foraging ecology so sorely needs: the machine-learning based species distribution modelling, and the sensor-fusion based movement ecology. Finally, Jorge will introduce how his work here at CASUS aims at improving the accuracy of movement ecology methods used to estimate animal encounters, and hopefully bring it closer to the standard needed to test foraging theories.

LICENSE:
CC BY-SA 4.0

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