VectorByte Training Materials 2026


Pre-work and set-up

Pre-workshop reading

Before attending the workshop, we request that you read the following three papers, as they will provide much of the conceptual framework that we rely on:

  1. MIReAD, a minimum information standard for reporting arthropod abundance data

  2. MIReVTD, a minimum information standard for reporting vector trait data

  3. The Role of Vector Trait Variation in Vector-Borne Disease Dynamics


Hardware and Software

  • We will be using R for all data manipulation and analyses/model fitting. Any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux) will do, as long as you have R (version 3.6 or higher) installed.

  • You may use any IDE/ GUI for R (VScode, RStudio, Emacs, etc). For most people, RStudio is a good option. Whichever one you decide to use, please make sure it is installed and tested before the workshop.

  • We also host all materials on GitHub, and all students should have a GitHub account.


Optional: Review of R and Statistics

We are assuming familiarity with R basics as well as at least introductory statistics, including up through simple linear regression. If you would like materials to review, we recommend the following from The Multilingual Quantitative Biologist.

  1. R: Biological Computing in R Chapter.

  2. Basic statistics, through linear models: The Multilingual Quantitative Biologist - Basic Data Analyses and Statistics.



Live Workshop Materials

Introduction to the Workshops


Introduction to Git and Introduction to Data Types and Manipulation with R


Introduction to Traits


Intro to the VecTraits Database


The VecTraits AI assisted digitization pipeline


Simple TPC fitting pipeline using NLLS


Introduction to the VecDyn database


Environmental covariates for time and space dependent data


Introduction to Time Dependent Data and reproducible data pipelines