Dr David Peel BSc (Hons), PhD

Expertise and research interests

I am part of the CSIRO Mathematical and Information Science (CMIS) group that is working within Australian Marine Mammal Centre to provide statistical modelling and analysis expertise. My background has mainly been within the area of fisheries science, which has many statistical commonalities with marine mammal research.  Broadly, the root of most of the problems I tackle is to quantify species abundance and spatial-temporal distribution.  With marine mammals this is generally done using aerial and/or sea based line-transect surveys, land based surveys on migration routes, tag mark-recapture or genetic methods.  The statistical methods I generally employ are model based survey design, spatial modelling, and distance sampling. My other interests include designing, implementing and analysing video, infrared, and audio systems for aerial surveys.

Selected publications

Leaper, R., Peel, S., Peel, D., and Gales, N. (2008) Exploring the assumptions of multi-stock assessment models for humpback whales in the Southern Hemisphere: using breeding stocks D and E as an example. Southern Hemisphere Humpback Whale Special Issue of The Journal of Cetacean Research and Management. <in press>

Ovenden, J.R., Peel, D., Street, R., Courtney, A., Hoyle, S., Peel, S., and Podlich, H. (2007).  The genetic effective and adult census size of an Australian population of tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus). Molecular Ecology 16, 127-138.

Gribble, N., Good, N., Peel, D., Tanimoto, M.,  and Officer, R. (2006). Innovative stock assessment and effort mapping using VMS and electronic logbooks. FRDC 2002/056 Report. Australia.

Hoyle, S.D., Peel., D., Ovenden, J.R., and Broderick, D. (2005). ShadowBoxer and LocusEater: Programs to optimise experimental design and multiplexing strategies for harvest rate estimates of fish populations using genetic tagging. Molecular Ecology Notes 5, 974-976).

Ovenden, J.R., Basford, K., Broderick, D., Courtney, T., Dichmont, C.,Hoyle, S., Jorde, P-E., Peel, D., Peel, S.L., Podlich, H., and Street, R. (2004) Development of a genetic method to estimate effective spawner numbers in the NPF and Queensland tiger prawn fisheries. FRDC 2001/018 Report. Australia, 236p

Peel, D., Whiten, W.J., and McLachlan, G.J. (2001). Fitting mixtures of Kent distributions to aid in joint set identification. Journal of the American Statistical Association 96, 56-63.

McLachlan, G.J. and Peel, D. (2000). Finite Mixture Models. New York: Wiley. xxii + 419 pp.

Peel, D. and McLachlan. G.J. (2000). Robust mixture modelling using the t distribution. Statistics and Computing 10, 335-344.