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University of Nebraska–Lincoln

School of Natural Resources

From Earth to Sky and Everything In Between

Andrew (Drew) Tyre

Andrew (Drew) J. Tyre


Hi, I’m Andrew (Drew) Tyre, assistant professor of wildlife ecology and human dimensions in the School of Natural Resources.

My main area of interest revolves around helping people to make good wildlife management decisions, especially when very little is known about the wildlife population. We often know particularly little about threatened and endangered species, and we must make many decisions about such species. I like to try and frame these problems to identify “robust” decisions that ensure good outcomes even when we use inaccurate information.

Right now, I’m working on using very simple, “prototype” models of habitat and population dynamics to guide decisions about habitat management for Interior Least Terns, Piping Plovers, and other threatened and endangered species. I build these models together with small groups of managers and stakeholders to directly incorporate their objectives into the modeling process. By involving the decision makers in the process of predicting the consequences of their decisions, they accept the recommendations emerging from the decision support process much more readily.

I received a bachelor’s in zoology from the University of Alberta, a master’s in behavioral ecology from Simon Fraser University and a Ph.D. in spatial population ecology from the University of Adelaide. I arrived at UNL in 2003.

Personnel Information

Name Drew J. Tyre
University Title Assistant Professor
Address 416 Hardin Hall, Lincoln NE 68583-0974
Phone 402-472-4054
Fax 402-472-2946
Email atyre2@unl.edu
Related Websites http://snr.unl.edu/tyre

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Key Publications

  • Aly Deines, Ellen Peterson, Derek Boeckner, James Boyle, Amy. Keighley, Joy Kogut, Joan Lubben, Richard. Rebarber, Richard Ryan, Brigitte. Tenhumberg, Stuart Townley, Andrew J. Tyre (2007) Robust population management under uncertainty for structured population models. Ecological Applications 17(8):2175-2138.
  • Scott Field, Patrick O’Connor, Andrew J. Tyre, & Hugh Possingham (2007) Making Monitoring Meaningful. Austral Ecology 32:485-491.
  • Atte Moilanen, Michael C. Runge, Jane Elith, Andrew J. Tyre, Yohay Carmel, Eric Fegraus, Brendan Wintle, Mark Burgman and Yakov Ben-Haim (2006) Planning for robust reserve networks using uncertainty analysis. Ecological Modelling 199:115-124.
  • Jonathan Rhodes, Andrew J. Tyre, Niclas Jonzen, Clive McAlpine, Hugh Possingham. (2006) Optimising presence/absence surveys for detecting population trends. Journal of Wildlife Management 70(1):8-18.
  • Martin, T.G., Wintle, B.A., Rhodes, J.R., Kuhnert, P.M., Field, S.A., Low-Choy, S.J., Tyre, A.J., Possingham, H.P. (2005) Zero tolerance ecology: improving ecological inference by modelling the source of zero observations. Ecology Letters, 8, 1235 -1246.
  • Scott Field, Andrew J. Tyre, Katherine Thorn, Patrick O'Connor, Hugh P. Possingham (2005) Improving the efficiency of wildlife monitoring by estimating detectability: a case study of foxes (Vulpes vulpes) on the Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Wildlife Research 32: 253-258
  • Scott Field, Andrew J. Tyre, Hugh P. Possingham. (2005) Optimizing landscape-scale monitoring under economic and observational constraints. Journal of Wildlife Management 69:473-482.
  • Brigitte Tenhumberg, Andrew J. Tyre, Katriona Shea & Hugh Possingham. (2004) Linking wild and captive populations to maximize species persistence: optimal translocation strategies. Conservation Biology 18, 1304-1314.
  • Scott Field, Andrew J. Tyre, Niclas Jonzén, Jonathan Rhodes & Hugh Possingham (2004) Minimizing the cost of environmental management decisions by optimizing statistical thresholds. Ecology Letters 7:669-675.
  • Tyre, A.J., C.M. Bull, B. Tenhumberg and N. Chilton. 2003. Indirect evidence of density dependent population regulation in Aponomma hydrosauri (Acari: Ixodidae), an ectoparasite of reptiles. Australian Ecology 28:196-203.
  • Tyre, A.J., B. Tenhumberg, S.A. Field, D. Niejalke, K. Parris and H.P. Possingham. (2003). Improving precision and reducing bias in biological surveys by estimating false negative error rates in presence-absence data. Ecological Applications. 13: 1790-1801.

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