Research Interests
- Development and application of statistical methods for analyzing animal tracking data
- Scaling relationships and evolutionary ecology
- Behavioral ecology in response to climate change
Education
- PhD, Zoology, University of Oxford
- BS, Ecology, Concordia University
Experience
Noonan received an undergraduate degree in ecology from Concordia University in 2012, where he studied fish behavior and conservation. He earned his doctorate in zoology from the University of Oxford in 2016. His doctoral research focused on using novel animal tracking technologies to develop a better understanding of how motivation and optimal foraging theory influenced the behavioral decisions. At SCBI’s Conservation Ecology Center, Noonan is working with quantitative ecologists Justin Calabrese and Chris Fleming on furthering statistically appropriate methods for bridging the gap between technological developments and practical ecology. He recently conducted the largest and most comprehensive evaluation of autocorrelation and bias in home range estimation to date, putting to rest an issue that was heavily debated for decades.
Selected Publications
Noonan MJ, Tucker M, Fleming CH, …(53 other authors)…, Mueller T, and Calabrese JM. Accepted. A comprehensive analysis of autocorrelation and bias in home range estimation. Ecological Monographs.
Winner* K, Noonan* MJ, Fleming CH, Olson KA, Mueller T, Sheldon D, and Calabrese JM. 2018. Statistical inference for home range overlap. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 9(7), 1679-1691. *Co-first authors
Fleming CH, Sheldon D, Fagan WF, Leimgruber P, Mueller T, Nandintsetseg D, Noonan MJ, Olson KA, Setyawan E, Sianipar A, and Calabrese JM. 2018. Correcting for missing and irregular data in home-range estimation, Ecological Applications, 28(4), 1003-1010.
Noonan MJ, Abidur Rahman M, Newman C, Buesching CD, and Macdonald DW. 2015. Avoiding verisimilitude when modelling ecological responses to climate change: The influence of weather conditions on trapping efficiency in European badgers (Meles meles). Global Change Biology, 21(20), 3575-3585.
Noonan MJ, Markham A, Newman C, Trigoni N, Buesching CD, Ellwood SA, and Macdonald DW 2015. A new Magneto-Inductive tracking technique to uncover subterranean activity: What do animals do underground? Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 6(5), 510-520.
