Global climate is rapidly changing, and many species (if they can) are actively responding to those changes by shifting their distributions. But where do they go? What options do they have? And how can we track their movements at broad spatial scales?
Answering these questions is far from straightforward. Data on species distributions are often difficult to collect, noisy and challenging to model. They are riddled with zeros – situations where researchers don’t see anything at all, even in the most suitable habitats. In other cases, a large flock or school of individuals can shoot past, producing unexpectedly high counts.
In this fascinating talk, Distinguished Professor Marti Anderson will reveal what typical species count data truly look like at large spatial scales and the statistical challenges involved in making sense of them. She will demonstrate how innovative new modelling approaches can be used to track changes in species abundance along temperature gradients and across latitudes.
Using these methods, Professor Anderson has uncovered and quantified remarkable global-scale shifts in the latitudinal distributions of hundreds of bird species and thousands of fish populations, often with surprising results.
Join us to discover how statistics can help uncover one of the most important biological responses to climate change: where species go when their world begins to change.
At the end of the talk, there will be a Q&A followed by refreshments.
| Date: | Wednesday 18 November 2026 |
| Time: | 6-8:15 pm. Doors open 5:45 pm. (Lecture concludes at 7:15 pm, followed by refreshments) |
| Venue: | Messel Lecture Theatre, Sydney Nanoscience Hub (SNH), Physics Road, The University of Sydney |
| Registration: | Free event. Registration essential by Thursday 13 November for catering purposes. |
Marti Anderson’s core research is in community ecology, biodiversity, multivariate analysis, species distribution models, experimental design and resampling techniques, with a special focus on creating novel statistical methods for ecological applications. Marti completed a Bachelor’s degree in Biology (Occidental College, Los Angeles, USA), followed by a Postgraduate Diploma in Zoology, a PhD in Marine Ecology and a Master's in Mathematical Statistics (University of Sydney, Australia). A Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ), Marti is currently the sole director of PRIMER-e, a boutique research and software development company, with the mission to empower researchers with robust statistical tools to gain powerful insights from complex multivariate data. She is also Distinguished Professor in the School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences (SMCS) at Massey University in Auckland. Marti has designed and developed a host of statistical methods, encapsulated in the software PRIMER 8 with PERMANOVA+, which is used by researchers across hundreds of fields in over 130 countries worldwide. Thousands of citations of Marti’s work year-on-year have consistently placed her in the top 0.05 to 0.1% of scientists in her field (Stanford University/Elsevier World’s Top 2% of Scientists).
The Murray Lecture is named in honour of Professor Patrick Murray, who was Head of the School of Biological Sciences from 1949 until 1960. The lectureship was established in 2006 following a bequest from Professor Patrick Murray in late 2005.
The lectureship aims to bring an internationally noted academic to the School of Life and Environmental Sciences to present public lectures, participate in workshops and provide mentoring for postgraduate students.
