Faculty
Professors | Lecturers | Affiliate | Postdocs | Emeritus
Professors

Ken Aho, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Community Ecology & Statistics
Office: Life Sciences 419
(208) 282-3391
Research
Lab: Life Sciences 418
Foundational and Applied Statistics for Biologists Using R
We study biostatistics and community ecology.
Teaching
Biographical sketch
Dr. Aho became a tenure track faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences in 2011. Dr. Aho currently teaches and conducts research in statistics and ecology. His work in biostatistics has resulted in the pedagogic R software package asbio and the textbook: "Foundational and Applied Statistics for Biologists Using R". His work in community ecology has been both theoretical (e.g., confidence intervals for ratios and products of binomial proportions) and practical (e.g., reclamation of ponderosa pine steppe following coal mining). Dr. Aho enjoys playing guitar, skiing, rock climbing and spending time with his wife Jessica (an entomologist) and son Olavi (named for his Finnish grandfather).
Education
Selected publications
Jimenez-Sanchez, C., Hanlon, R., Aho, K., Powers, C., Morris, C. E., Schmale III, D. G. In press. Diversity and ice nucleation activity of microorganisms collected with a Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) in France and the United States. Frontiers in Microbiology. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.01667
Derryberry, D., Aho, K. Peterson, T. 2018. Model selection and regression t-statistics. The American Statistician doi: 10.1080/00031305.2018.1459316
Moler, E., Aho, K. 2018. Community properties of foliar fungal endophytes in relation to white pine blister rust in whitebark pines of the Southern Cascades, USA. Fungal Ecology 33: 104-114. doi: 10.1016/j.funeco.2018.02.003
Hill, R., Loxterman, J., Aho, K. 2017. Insular biogeography and population genetics of dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium americanum). Ecosphere. 8(5): e01810 doi: 10.1002/ecs2.1810
Aho, K., Derryberry, D., Peterson, T. 2017. A graphical framework for model selection criteria and significance tests (refutation, confirmation and ecology). Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 8(1): 47–56. doi: 10.1111/2041-210X.12648
Zorio, S. D., Williams, C. F., Aho, K. 2016. Sixty-five years of change in montane plant communities in Western Colorado, USA. Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 48(4): 703-728. doi: 10.1657/AAAR0016-011