Matrix population models (MPMs) describe the dynamics of a population in discrete time using discrete stages (e.g. age or size classes, developmental stages). Myriad demographic outputs can be obtained from them, including life expectancy, degree of iteroparity, population growth rates, etc.  The sister databases COMPADRE and COMADRE (http://www.compadre-db.org) contain thousands of matrices obtained from the literature for hundreds of species, and are thus powerful resources to tackle comparative questions demography. During this 5-hr workshop, attendees will be given a crash introductory course in MPM analysis using R and in using the COM(P)ADRE data set which is provided as a structured R object. The attendees will put these skills to use to analyze a set of MPM data obtained from COM(P)ADRE to address one or more example comparative questions.

Topics that may be addressed include (but are not limited to) (i) risk of quasi-extinction across taxa, (ii) correlations between growth form and mean life expectancy, (iii) links between demographic and stochastic environmental changes, (iv) evaluation of the phylogenetic signal in demographic traits.

Attendees are expected to have at least intro-level skills in R programming, and to bring their own laptop with R installed to the session.