The Engine of The New New Zealand

Journey to the bottom of the sea

Counting things. It’s more than numbers.

If Marti Anderson has anything to do with it, numbers are the key to understanding the ecological patterns of planet earth – and to how we impact natural systems.

From the crazy-looking 'hagfish' and Antarctic bacteria to endangered butterflies in Borneo, wolves in North America and fish in New Zealand, Marti Anderson and her unique software are influencing the development of wildlife reserves and animal protection all over the world.

The first woman in New Zealand to become a full-time professor in mathematics, statistics or computer science– and the youngest New Zealander to become a full professor in statistics, Marti’s making a real difference to our knowledge of biodiversity on planet earth.

Marti Anderson

Marti Anderson
Professor of Statistics
Massey University Lecturer

What does Marti do?

A modern-day Jacques Cousteau, Marti does an annual survey of fish biodiversity across north-eastern New Zealand as a personal project she started 12 years ago – her very own contribution to our ecological knowledge of the sea.

Professor Marti Anderson’s approach fuses biology and statistics.

This is a relatively unique approach to science, encapsulated in her software ‘PERMANOVA+’, first released in 1998 and now implemented in a package developed jointly with colleagues in the UK.

Today scientists the world over are using her methods and software to monitor and analyse marine and land-based communities.

But it’s not all just about sitting behind a computer screen, or analysing somebody else’s data. She also gets out there, seeing (and counting!) it all for herself. Imagine spending part of your working life diving along New Zealand’s beautiful coast, or sending cameras down to very deep depths in order to discover new species – how cool! That’s just what she does.

Marti trained in marine biology and ecology in the United States and Australia, and has a master’s degree in Mathematical Statistics and a PhD in Marine Science from the University of Sydney. Today she’s Professor of Ecological Statistics at Massey University.

The essence of her speciality is called multivariate analysis – to analyse sets of numbers and how they vary.

“When you try to count numbers of individuals of different species, they are going to vary day-to-day. Some individuals die, more are born, or are eaten by prey. Every single species is basically a variable – it has an average, a variance and a tendency to be highly aggregated, or not. Every species is different, yet species interact with one another, and it’s all happening at once.”

Her main game is to consider whole sets of species simultaneously – a community. Modelling a community of species poses many challenges, and thrills.

Her other main area of interest is the design of experiments – especially sampling programmes to identify environmental impacts. To differentiate natural variation in a community from something unusual – like a human impact such as fishing or dredging or increased sediment loads – getting the sampling design right is essential.

Impacting global biodiversity

Marti’s product and expertise are in growing demand worldwide.

She has led 35 workshops on her software – PERMANOVA+ – all over the world in the 14 years since it was launched. As scientists try to understand and articulate the degree of uncertainty around the ecological impacts of climate change, the worldwide use of Marti’s PERMANOVA+ product has elevated New Zealand’s status as a leader in the field of marine science and environmental monitoring and assessment.

International impact

Marti has been invited to work on international task-forces in the United States to model biodiversity at vast (global) scales. As part of such a group, she co-authored an internationally-recognised study last year (in Science) showing that species turnover – changes in the identities of species, called “beta diversity” – is greater than what you would expect from a random sample of individuals from a regional species pool. More importantly, this pattern was found to be highly consistent whether you are in the tropics or in temperate regions. This is despite the known trend for higher overall species richness in tropical environments.

Snot eels captured on camera

Marti and her team attracted global attention when they captured rare images of a freakish deepwater fish.

Marti and her team of colleagues at Te Papa, working on a Marsden-funded project captured video images of hagfish – also known as ‘snot eels’ – repelling sharks and other predators with copious slime, which it secretes at astonishing speed from its pores along the length of its body.

The snot eel’s crafty defence mechanism was a world-first observation, and it could help to explain why they are the oldest living fish family, having been around for 300 million years.

Find out more about Natural Sciences

Get started!

If you want to follow in Marti’s footsteps check out our Area of Interest page for natural sciences.

There you’ll learn more relating to what natural science is really all about, what kinds of careers you can get in that field, and how Massey University can help you get started down that path – just like Marti.