International Statistical Ecology Conference

January 8 -15, 2027
Mérida, México

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The International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) is the main international gathering of statistical ecologists. It is an inclusive interdisciplinary conference at the interface between statistics and ecology. By closing the gap between ecology and statistics, two aims are achieved – helping ecologists discover new and state of the art statistical & machine learning methods and learn how best to use them, whilst at the same time make statisticians aware of the top priority methodological problems ecologists would like to solve.

ISEC is a biennial conference, since the first conference in 2008 at St Andrews (Scotland, UK), followed by Canterbury (2010, UK), Krokkleiva (Norway, 2012), Montpellier (2014, France), Seattle (2016, USA), St Andrews (2018, Scotland, UK), Sydney (2020, Australia – virtual conference), Cape Town (2022, South Africa), Swansea (2024, Wales, UK). In January 2027, it will be held in Mérida, México, as an in-person conference, organized by the Autonomous University of Yucatán (UADY) and the National Autonomous University of México (UNAM).

Through talks, posters and workshops, a broad range of topics are typically covered including abundance estimation, animal movement, biodiversity, capture-recapture, citizen science, community dynamics, computer vision, disease ecology, distance sampling, epidemiology, evolutionary ecology, fisheries, individual-based models, integrated population models, metapopulation dynamics, microbiome, multispecies models, occupancy models, population dynamics, spatial ecology, species distribution models, and survey design.

Plenary Speakers

Jason Matthiopoulos

Professor of Spatial and Population Ecology

University of Glasgow

Erin Mordecai

Associate Professor in Biology

Stanford University

Mevin Hooten

Professor of Statistics & Data Science

University of Texas at Austin

Patricia Koleff Osorio

National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO)

Government of México

Florian Hartig

Professor of Theoretical Ecology

University of Regensburg

Alison Johnston

Reader in Statistics

University of St Andrews

Workshops

INLA and beyond: Bayesian hierarchical modelling with inlabru

Jafet Belmont Osuna, University of Glasgow

1-day

Co-occurrence modelling in practice – understanding flexible models for species co-occurrence in frequentist and Bayesian frameworks

Albert Bonet Bigata, University of Aberdeen
Amber Cowans, University of St Andrews
Chris Sutherland, University of St Andrews

1-day

Bayesian disease ecology: mechanistic models for epidemics, invasive species and beyond

Dr. Rob Deardon, University of Calgary
Caitlin Ward, University of Minnesota

1-day

Residual diagnostics of generalized linear (mixed-effects) models with DHARMa

Melina de Souza Leite, University of Regensburg
Florian Hartig, University of Regensburg

1-day

Best Practices for Species Distribution Modeling using Participatory Science Data

Matt Strimas-Mackey, Cornell University
Anna Lello-Smith, Wildlife Conservation Society, Mesoamerica & Western Caribbean
Andrew Stillman, Cornell University

1-day

Joint species distribution modelling for DNA metabarcoding data with HMSC

Otso Ovaskainen, University of Helsinki
Nerea Abrego, University of Jyväskylä
Jennifer Kampe, University of Jyväskylä
Brendan Furneaux, University of Jyväskylä
Sten Anslan, University of Jyväskylä

1-day

Deep Species Distribution Modeling and other regression models with the cito R package

Maximilian Pichler, University of Regensburg
Florian Hartig, University of Regensburg

1-day

Integrated movement models for telemetry and species distribution data

Frances Buderman, Pennsylvania State University
Ephraim Hanks, Pennsylvania State University
Dave Miller, Pennsylvania State University
Viviana Ruiz-Gutierrez, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Half-day

Reliably inferring biodiversity metrics from continuously collected monitoring data classified with AI

Aimée Freiberg, University of Fribourg
Daniel Wegmann, University of Fribourg

1-day

An Introduction to Close-Kin Mark-Recapture for Fisheries Applications

Joanna Mills Flemming, Dalhousie University

Half-day

Bayesian hidden Markov models for animal movement time series

Vianey Leos Barajas, University of Toronto

1-day

Important Dates

Workshop Submissions

Open: October 2025
Close: November 15, 2025

Roundtable Submissions

Open: October 2025
Close: November 15, 2025

Contributed Talks & Posters

Open: February 2026
Close: May 2026
Notification of Acceptance: July 2026

Registration

Early Bird Opens:
March 2026
Early Bird Closes:
September 2026

Contact: isec.statistical.ecology@gmail.com