Many biologists might indeed ?nd statistics dull or even terrifying (van Emden, 2008), but ecologists and wildlife biologists should be downright ecstatic with recent developments in statistical modeling. One of the most exciting advances in recent decades is the development of hierarchical models. Hierarchical or multi-level models are becoming increasingly common in population analysis, and with good reason. Indeed, Kéry & Schaub (2011) devote much of their ?nal chapter to the ‘Power and Beauty of Hierarchical Models’, and among the many virtues they list for hierarchical models are simpler ?tting of complex models, clarity of thinking about these models and a ‘step-up’ approach to model building (Kéry & Schaub, 2011). Simpler and clearer model construction is an important advantage of hierarchical models, and although this may be reason enough to choose a hierarchical approach to modeling ecological data, the bene?ts do not stop with the ?tting of the model to data.
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