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

Patricia Koleff Osorio
National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO)
Government of México
Workshops
INLA and beyond: Bayesian hierarchical modelling with inlabru
Dr.Jafet Belmont Osuna, University of Glasgow
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
Dr. Chris Sutherland, University of St Andrews
Bayesian disease ecology: mechanistic models for epidemics, invasive species and beyond
Dr. Rob Deardon, University of Calgary
Dr. Caitlin Ward, University of Minnesota
Residual diagnostics of generalized linear (mixed-effects) models with DHARMa
Dr. Melina de Souza Leite, University of Regensburg
Dr. Florian Hartig, University of Regensburg
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




