Biomathematics & Statistics Scotland
BioSS creates user-friendly software, to enable the algorithms developed in our research to be easily deployed and applied by non-technical users. Here we describe a selection of pieces of software written during the reporting period.
StagePop enables ecologists to model the dynamics of populations
that are stage-structured (those in which individuals transition
between distinct stages, e.g. eggs, juveniles, adults for most
insects). Although initially developed to model the impact climate
change may have on populations whose development rates
are temperature dependent, such as potato cyst nematodes, its
capability is much more general, including modelling interacting
species in complex food webs.
The DUST environment for evaluating data from Distinctness, Uniformity and STability crop trial results has been enhanced with an improved method for analysing plant uniformity over a period of years. An implementation of this method, written in R, is currently being assessed by the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) as a replacement for existing, less flexible methods and, if successful, will be used internationally.
