Bob O'Hara

Academy Research Fellow
Biometry and Biomathematics

Contact info

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics
 P.O. Box 68
 FIN-00014, University of Helsinki, Finland

Email: boh 'at' rni.helsinki.fi
Phone: +358 9 191 51479
Fax: +358 9 191 51400
Visiting address: (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b), top floor, room A409

I am forever unclear about whether I am a biologist or a statistician (I think it depends on who I'm talking to). Most of my work is at the interface of the two. Fortunately for me, I am presently employed by the Academy of Finland as a research fellow, which means that I can avoid doing too much teaching.

As well as my normal research, I also run the OpenBUGS web pages, and am a founder of the Journal of Negative Results - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Research interests

I spend most of my time working on ecology and evolutionary biology, mainly statistical analyses. My areas of interest include:

• Community ecology
• Evolutionary and quantitative genetics
• Population ecology
• Risk assessments for genetically modified organisms (part of the ARGUE project)

More details are given here.

Teaching

Thanks to my present position, I do not have to do any teaching. This does not totally stop me from inflicting my typos and poor sense of humour on students, and there are details of previous courses I have taught are here. I taught these courses last summer:

• Bayesian Analysis for the Life Sciences, Asturias, Spain, July.
• Causal and Bayesian Methods, Finland, August.

Recent Publications

For a full list of publications, click here

• Kuparinen, A., Schurr, F., Tackenberg, O., O'Hara R.B., 2007. Air-mediated pollen flow from genetically modified to conventional crops -risk assessment with a mechanistic model. Ecological Applications 17: 431-440.

• Leinonen, T., O'Hara, R.B., Cano, J.M., Merilä, J., 2008. Comparative studies of quantitative trait and neutral marker divergence: A meta-analysis. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 21: 1-17. Link

• Mutshinda, C.M., O'Hara, R.B. and Woiwod, I.P. Species abundance dynamics under neutral assumptions: a Bayesian approach to the controversy. \Functional Ecology Link

• O'Hara, R.B., 2005. Comparing the effects of genetic drift and fluctuating selection on genotype frequency changes in the scarlet tiger moth. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 272: 211-217.

• Snäll, T., O'Hara, R.B., Arjas, E., 2007. A mathematical and statistical framework for modeling dispersal. Oikos 116: 1037-1050.

• Snäll, T., O'Hara, R.B., Ray, C., Collinge, S.K., 2008. Climate-driven spatial dynamics of plague among prairie dog colonies. American Naturalist 171: 238-248. Link