This is the first volume in the Practical Statistics for Biologists Workbooks series. It provides biologists with an easy-to-follow introduction to conducting statistical analysis in R. It does this through a series of practical exercises based on easy-to-follow flow diagrams that show biologists exactly how to do a variety of key tasks.

These include: 1. Importing data sets and preparing them for analysis; 2. Creating graphs from them; 3. Assessing and transforming their distributions; 4. Using statistics to compare data between groups; 5. Conducting correlations and regressions.

Together, these represent the key tasks biologists need to be able to carry out to start analysing their data using R. This means it provides the perfect practical introduction for any biologist interested in learning how to use R to do statistics.

This book is also well-suited to act as a course text for those who wish to teach introductory statistics courses using R to undergraduate, masters or postgraduate students in any biological field. This is because it not only provides a practical guide suitable for accompanying the teaching of statistical theory, it also provides off-the-shelf exercises, complete with suitable data sets, that can be used as the basis for practical classes.

This workbook introduces biologists to the key practical skills they need to create high quality graphs and maps in R. It is aimed both at students who are taking their first courses on data processing, analysis and visualisation and at biologists who wish to teach themselves how to use R. As well as providing a quick-start guide to using R itself, this workbook provides a series of practical exercises based on easy-to-follow flow diagrams that show biologists exactly how to do a variety of key tasks in it. These include:

1. Creating your first graphs in R using the GGPlot package, including making basic graphs, such as frequency distribution histograms, creating high quality graphs suitable for inclusion in presentations and publications, creating different types of graphs from the same data set, and making graphs that display data from more than data series.

2. Creating graphs to display groups of data using GGPlot, including bar graphs of count data, graphs of summary statistics for one variable with error bars, point graphs of summary statistics for two variables with vertical and horizontal error bars, and box plots.

3. Creating graphs of individual data points, including scatter plots, line graphs of time series data, and matrices of pair plots.

4. Creating other types of graphs from biological data including pie charts, bubble graphs, mixed type graphs, and X-Y graphs of tracking data.

5. Creating maps from biological data in R using the GGPlot package.

Together, these represent the key tasks that biologists need to be able to create high quality and informative graphs and maps using R.

This is the second book in the Practical Statistics for Biologists Workbooks series. This series aims to fill the gap between learning about statistical theory and learning how to actually use statistics in a practical and biological meaningful way. The focus of this series is, therefore, on the development of practical skills, based on learning appropriate workflows, rather than teaching statistical theory.

The PSLS series of books uses Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to understand the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in their own work.

This workbook is a companion volume to GIS For Biologists: A Practical Introduction For Undergraduates. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in biological research provided in that book, as a result, it assumes that the reader already as some level of familiarity with GIS. In addition, it has been specially written based around free-to-access, open source software. Specifically, it uses two such packages, QGIS for the GIS-based components, and R for statistical analyses. Working with both of these packages, rather than just one or other, allows you to make the most of the specialist tools available within each of them.

It contains five exercises which will introduce you to the basic spatial processing and analytical techniques required to create a biologically meaningful species distribution model (SDM). Taken together, these exercises allow you to work through an example of an SDM from processing your survey data and making raster data layers of environmental variables to constructing an SDM, visualising its predicted spatial distribution and validating its predictive ability. The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set which can be downloaded from an accompanying webpage.

Working through these five exercises will help the user obtain experience in creating SDM using QGIS and R, and provide them with the confidence to apply these skills to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format used in GIS For Biologists: A Practical Introduction For Undergraduates. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results.

The PSLS series of books uses Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the fifth companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This book consists of five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology using ESRI's ArcGIS(R) 10.2 software. These exercises are based around creating maps for reports and presentations. They range from making a map template which allows you to quickly make new maps in a standard format to creating a custom legend which allows you to repeatedly apply the same symbols to multiple data layers and making multi-part maps . The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set, which can be download separately for free. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience making maps for reports and presenations, and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book provides a user-friendly and practical introduction to the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in marine biology. Unlike most other books about using GIS, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context. It is divided into three sections. The first section provides just enough background information to allow you to get started with GIS without getting too bogged down in the theory behind it or making some of the most common mistakes made by beginners. It covers areas such as what GIS is, why GIS is useful in marine biology, the basics of GIS, common concepts and terms in GIS, how data are contained in a GIS, useful information about what to think about before starting a GIS project and how to break down and translate marine biological tasks into the language of GIS. This information is provided in easy-to-read and non-technical language with specific reference to its application in marine biology. The second section, which constitutes the main body of the book, consists of a 'How To...' reference guide for carrying out specific tasks which marine biologists are likely to need to be able to do in their everyday research using ESRI's ArcGIS(R)10.1 software. This information is provided in easy-to-follow instruction sets which allow you to complete each task with the minimum of reference to other parts of the book. As a result, it is designed to be dipped into, as and when needed, by both novices and more experienced marine biological GIS users who need reminding of how to do specific things from time to time, rather than to be read from start to finish. The final section provides additional useful reference material including a guide to using extensions in ArcGIS 10.1 software, a guide to useful tools in ArcGIS 10.1 software, a brief chapter on trouble-shooting GIS projects and a glossary of common terms. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This is the first supplementary workbook produced to accompany 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology' by the same author. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. This second edition has been updated for ArcGIS 10.1 software and it contains five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology. These exercises are based around mapping species distribution and range from making a simple map of the locations where a species has been recorded to creating grids of species presence-absence, species richness and abundance. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in working with GIS and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This workbook is a companion volume to GIS For Biologists: A Practical Introduction For Undergraduates. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in biological research provided in that book, as a result, it assumes that the reader already as some level of familiarity with GIS. In addition, it has been specially written based around free-to-access, open source software. Specifically, it uses two such packages, QGIS for the GIS-based components, and R for statistical analyses. Working with both of these packages, rather than just one or other, allows you to make the most of the specialist tools available within each of them.

It contains five exercises which demonstrate how to integrate QGIS and R to allow you to conduct high quality spatial analyses by accessing and combining the powerful mapping, data layer creation, editing and processing tools from QGIS and the equally powerful analytical tools from R. These exercises are based around data from a real biological field study and include: creating a GIS project to process your data and create a map suitable for publication; creating environmental raster data layers; linking environmental data to biological data and creating graphs from the resulting data set; and running statistical analyses (GLMs and GAMs) to investigate spatial relationships in this combined data set.

Working through these five exercises will help the user obtain experience in integrating QGIS and R for spatial analysis, and provide them with the confidence to apply these skills to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format used in GIS For Biologists: A Practical Introduction For Undergraduates. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their spatial analysis project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results.

The PSLS series of books uses Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the second companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This book consists of five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology using ESRI's ArcGIS(R) 10.2 software. These exercises are based around creating and using raster data layers to display and analyse environmental variables. They range from making raster data layers of environmental variables to linking this information to data layers of species occurrence. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in working with raster data layers of environmental variables and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the fourth companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This book consists of five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology using ERSI's ArcGIS(R) 10.2 GIS software. These exercises are based around using GIS to investigate the home ranges of individual animals. They range from creating minimum convex polygons (MCPs) and kernel density estimates (KDEs) to comparing the home ranges of different individuals in a population. The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set which can be downloaded for free. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in investigating the home ranges of individual animals in a GIS-based environment, and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the third companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This book consists of five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology using ERSI's ArcGIS(R) 10.2 GIS software and R statistical software. These exercises are based around integrating GIS and Species Distribution Modelling (SDM), and work through an example of an SDM from processing your survey data, through making raster data layers of environmental variables to constructing an SDM, visualising its predicted spatial distribution and validating its predictive ability. The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set, which can be downloaded separately for free. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in creating and using SDMs, and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the seventh companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This supplementary workbook contains five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology. These exercises aim to introduce marine biologists to using QGIS (or Quantum GIS), a freely-available, open-source GIS software package, and range from making a simple map of the locations where a species was recorded for inclusion in a publication, or presentation to creating grids of species presence-absence, richness and abundance, and grids of environmental variables. The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set which can be downloaded separately for free. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in working with GIS and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book provides a user-friendly and practical introduction for undergraduates to the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in biological research. Unlike most other books about using GIS, this information is specifically presented in a biological context and it is divided into two sections.

The first section provides just enough background information to allow the novice biological GIS user to get started with GIS without getting too bogged down in the theory behind it or making some of the most common mistakes made by beginners. It covers areas such as what GIS is, why GIS is useful in biology, the basics of GIS, common concepts and terms in GIS, how data are contained in a GIS, useful information about what to think about before starting a GIS project and how to break down and translate ecological tasks into the language of GIS. This information is all provided in easy-to-read and non-technical language, with specific reference to its application in biological research.

The second section, which constitutes the main body of the book, consists of six practical exercises accompanied by detailed instruction sets. The first four exercises introduce the novice biological GIS user to basic, but important, GIS skills, such as making a map, creating new feature data layers, creating raster data layers and joining together data from different data layers. The final two consist of case studies of how GIS can be used to answer real biological research questions. Each of these exercises represents a stand-alone GIS lesson which can be completed either on its own or as part of a practical session for an undergraduate class. In addition, each exercise focuses on a different area of biology, such as tropical ornithology, epidemiology, marine biology and rainforest ecology, and on a different part of the world, including the Amazon rainforest, a Scottish field station, Mount Mabu in northern Mozambique, the North Atlantic Ocean and the USA. Instructions for each exercise are provided for both the leading commercial GIS package (ESRI's ArcGIS(R) 10.3 software) and the leading freely available open-source GIS software (QGIS 2.8.3, also known as Quantum GIS), meaning that this book can be used to learn, or teach, how to use of GIS in biological research, regardless of the availability of commercial software licences. Taken together, the two sections of this book provide the perfect primer to show undergraduates, and other novice GIS users, how useful GIS can be in biological research, why it is rapidly becoming a key skill in many areas of biology, and how start in using it.

The PSLS series of books uses Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required, rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.

This book is the sixth companion volume to 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. It is designed to augment the information on using GIS in marine biology provided in that book, and, indeed, to be used alongside it rather than to be used independently as a stand-alone volume. Therefore, this book will be of most interest to those who have already read 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. This book consists of five exercises covering the practical use of GIS in marine biology using ESRI's ArcGIS(R) 10.2 GIS software. These exercises are based around the creation of custom GIS tools to automate tasks which need to be done on a regular basis. These start with the creation of relatively simple tool to plot species locational data before progressing on to the creation of more complex custom tools and creating the appropriate metadata to accompany custom GIS tools. The exercises are designed to be followed in the order they are presented, and work with a specific data set which can be downloaded for free. Working through these five exercises will help the novice GIS user obtain experience in creating custom GIS tools, and so develop their GIS skills. Unlike most other GIS tutorials, this information is specifically presented in a marine biological context and all the exercises use real data from a marine biological study. Therefore, these exercises are more likely to provide the kind of experience in using GIS that marine biologists will find useful and applicable to their own research. These exercises are presented in the same easy-to-follow flow diagram-based format first introduced in the 'How To...' section of 'An Introduction To Using GIS In Marine Biology'. They are accompanied by images which show the user how their GIS project should look as they progress through the exercises, allowing them to compare their own work to the expected results. This is part of the PSLS series of books which use Task-Oriented Learning (TOL) to teach the practical application of research skills to the life sciences. This involves demonstrating how these skills can be used in the specific circumstances in which they are likely to be required rather than concentrating on teaching theoretical frameworks or on teaching skills in a generic or abstract manner. By seeing how the similar processes are used to achieve a variety of different goals within a specific field, it becomes easier for the reader to identify the general rules behind the practical application of these processes and, therefore, to transfer them to novel situations they may encounter in the future.