Dr Natasha Karenyi will present the Department of Statistical Science seminar with a talk entitled, "Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Research: answering old questions with new stats methods". 

Dr Natasha Karenyi is a post-doctoral fellow in the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation (SEEC), Department of Statistical Sciences, conducting marine biodiversity research with a conservation focus. Her statistical interest is mainly in methods to analyse multivariate data. She recently completed her PhD in Zoology from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (2015) based on habitat classification of sediment habitats on the continental shelf of the South African west coast.

Abstract: Marine biodiversity research in South Africa is focussed on uncovering biodiversity patterns and driving processes to answer conservation and management questions. For the last four decades, we have had a fairly standard way of doing this, but perhaps there are newer statistical methods that we can use to answer our questions more effectively.