Date
18-21 March 2019

Location
UCAS, Yanqihu Campus, Beijing, China

Credit points
1 CP

Course Language
English

Target Group
Doctoral Researchers from the field of experimental ecology
Interested Postdoctoral Researchers

Contents
The course focuses on modelling plant species interactions to explain ecosystem functioning. The following topics are covered: experimental design (randomized, blocking, factorial, split-plot), with emphasis on biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments, mixed effects models, generalized linear mixed effects models (glmms), some simple non-linear models, multivariate statistics, presentation of results of modelling. Coding species interactions in R, comparing positive and negative interactions in linear and non-linear models.Visualization of model results.

Goal
Understand the importance of different variables of population dynamic models and how the determine the consequences of species interactions.
Setting up R-Code, using real data. Explore data sets. Do own analysis and produce graphs on the results.

Didactic Elements
8 blocks of lectures, hands-on courses with analysis on own computers, discussion of approaches

You will need
Basic knowledge in R and experience in linear models
Own laptop with R, RStudio and required R packages installed

Expected performance
Preparation: Reading of course material and scientific publications distributed before the course.
Active participation in the discussions.
Independent analysis of the course data sets, writing own R code.
Short presentation of own results.

Lecturer(s) in charge