masts@st-andrews.ac.uk

Workshop organiser: Dr Ed Lavender

This workshop will introduce state-space modelling and model-based inference for animal-tracking data. The workshop will focus on the patter R package as a tool for model-based inference. Participants will gain the knowledge and expertise required to understand (a) where the patter sits within the animal-tracking ecosystem, (b) when to reach for the package and (c) how to apply the package with their own datasets.

Workshop rationale

• We are in the ‘golden age’ of animal tracking. A suite of electronic tagging and tracking technologies is now used to track aquatic animals across the globe. The data present enormous opportunities, but require the application of appropriate statistical methods for analysis.
• State-space models have emerged as a powerful modelling framework that represents individual movements and the processes connecting movements to observations. However, fitting state-space models to animal-tracking data can be difficult and computationally expensive.

Workshop outline

• This workshop will introduce state-space modelling and model-based inference for animal-tracking data, with a focus on the patter
• Depending on participant expertise, the workshop will comprise (a) an interactive presentation that builds the narrative for state-space modelling in movement ecology and introduces model-based inference plus (b) a practical session in which participants will learn to fit models to their own or example datasets using patter.
• patter fits state-space models to tracking datasets using particle filtering and smoothing algorithms, with a focus on data from aquatic animals in receiver arrays. patter is written in R, with a performant Julia patter users can estimate the underlying (‘latent’) states (locations) of tagged animals through time, plus characteristics of the movement and observation processes. The estimates support refined downstream analyses of movements, space use, home ranges, residency and habitat selection.

Participant guidance

• We hope the workshop will benefit participants that have an interest in animal tracking (especially passive acoustic telemetry users), ecological modelling and/or R and Julia We will assume minimal prior knowledge.
• Participants should bring a laptop, with R and Julia You should also install the patter and Patter.jl R and Julia packages, by following the instructions on GitHub (https://github.com/edwardlavender/patter). Experienced participants may also wish to install Wahoo.jl (https://github.com/scheidan/Wahoo.jl).
• For queries, please contact Edward Lavender (lavender@eawag.ch).

Organiser: Prof Rob Briers

This course will introduce postgraduates, early career researchers, and anyone new to Geographical Information Systems, to the use of GIS, and specifically the Open Source QGIS program. Following an initial overview of some of the key concepts and ideas, the focus will be on hands-on practical use of GIS for common mapping and analysis tasks. The course will cover sourcing, import and display of different data sources along with a selection of the major analysis procedures and effective mapping techniques.

Please bring a laptop with QGIS preinstalled (downloadable from https://qgis.org/download/, choosing the Long Term version, rather than the Latest). Other files needed can be downloaded in advance via a link provided nearer the time.

Organisers: Roseanna Wright, Charlotte Miskin-Hymas and Alice Rysiecki 

20 places available – please bring your own laptop

Data management is a critical skill that underpins the integrity, efficiency, and impact of research. It is a foundational aspect of conducting rigorous and reproducible research, making it essential for students and early career researchers to develop competence in this area. MEDIN workshops are designed to enhance attendees’ knowledge and skills in marine data management. Training will cover data management planning and tips for effective data management during a project as well as resources such as the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard, the MEDIN Data Guidelines, and controlled vocabularies. The MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard enables users to generate standardised information about their datasets and upload them to an online portal, facilitating data discovery. The MEDIN portal provides access to over 18,000 existing marine datasets, which can be used to provide context during research projects. Additionally, the MEDIN Data Guidelines offer a structured approach to collecting information about sampled data, ensuring it can be interpreted by others in the future. More information about MEDIN workshops can be found here.

Expected Outcomes/Outputs:

• Create a Data Management Plan.
• Explain how MEDIN data management practices can reduce costs and risks and provide examples of how extending the original purpose of data adds value.
• Explain the role of metadata in each step of the process data life cycle: from data collection, management, publication, to usage.
• Explain the importance of using controlled vocabularies.
• Identify relevant controlled vocabularies.
• Search controlled vocabularies for terms that accurately describe marine data content according to MEDIN standards and guidelines.
• Accurately represent geospatial data using appropriate tools and techniques.
• Define discovery metadata.
• Explain how the MEDIN discovery metadata standard is applied on the MEDIN portal.
• Use the MEDIN online metadata editor to create MEDIN-compliant discovery metadata records.
• Apply MEDIN data guidelines to create consistent datasets with comprehensive metadata, ensuring ease of sharing, understanding, and reuse.
• Explain the role of metadata in each step of the process of data collection, management, publication, and usage.
• Discuss the considerations for data reuse.

Organiser: Dr Neil Banas

Max: 25 spaces

The MASTS Working Group on Migration and Prey Energyscapes in Changing Oceans aims to find new common ground and shared questions between movement ecologists and ocean modellers looking at the same food chains but with opposite perspectives: from top predators looking down, from lower trophic levels looking up.

There is a long tradition of efforts to relate behaviour and change in mobile marine predator populations to change in underlying climate and ocean drivers—or conversely, to translate what we know about the past and future of ocean physics and lower trophic levels into implications for migration, movement, and population resilience in fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Making these leaps across trophic levels is a perennial grand challenge, but as animal-tracking observing technology improves, as modelling methods for describing seascapes, individuals, and populations advance – and as we bring together these complementary perspectives of the oceanographic and higher predator research communities – new types of synthesis become possible.

We invite short talks from across the MASTS community addressing this theme from all directions, such as:
• Studies of population dynamics and movement (e.g. foraging, migration) of mobile predators such as fish, marine mammals and seabirds that could benefit from oceanographic insight, data, perspective, and methods;
• Conversely, studies of past and future change in physical, biogeochemical and lower-trophic level environments that could be enhanced by a movement ecologist perspective, datasets and methods to explore consequences for the higher predators ranging across them.
• New mathematical and data-science approaches to quantifying, visualising and building mechanistic understanding of the drivers of higher predator behaviour across multiple spatial, temporal and trophic levels.

The Working Group will present initial results from a pilot synthesis project on Atlantic seabirds in winter in relation to zooplankton distributions. Ample discussion time will be reserved to identify promising, unexplored lines of contact between movement ecologists, oceanographers, and mathematical modellers, and to plan an expanded field of pilot projects for the Working Group’s second year. We welcome ongoing and exploratory work on this theme as well as completed studies.

Expected Outcomes/Outputs:
• Greatly expanded and diversified engagement with the Working Group. This event is an important opportunity to set an expanded agenda for our in-person, small-group technical work in spring 2026.
• Matchmaking among community members with complementary expertise, leading to new collaborations on proposals, papers, and PhD supervision teams.