Data from: Evaluating the importance of individual heterogeneity in reproduction to Weddell seal population dynamics using integral projection models ...

• Main Authors: Macdonald, Kaitlin, Rotella, Jay, Paterson, J. Terrill
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2023
• Subjects: FOS Natural sciences; age- and state-structured population model; integral projection model; unobserved individual heterogeneity; Population dynamics; Weddell seal; Weddell; Weddell Seal; Weddell Seals
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.wh70rxwt3; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.wh70rxwt3

Identifying and accounting for unobserved individual heterogeneity in vital rates in demographic models is important for estimating population-level vital rates and identifying diverse life-history strategies, but much less is known about how this individual heterogeneity influences population dynamics. We aimed to understand how the distribution of individual heterogeneity in reproductive and survival rates influenced population dynamics using vital rates from a Weddell seal population by altering the distribution of individual heterogeneity in reproduction, which also altered the distribution of individual survival rates through the incorporation of our estimate of the correlation between the two rates and assessing resulting changes in population growth. We constructed an integral projection model (IPM) structured by age and reproductive state using estimates of vital rates for a long-lived mammal that has recently been shown to exhibit large individual heterogeneity in reproduction. Using output from the ... : Individual Weddell seals are tagged at birth and resight surveys are conducted yearly to acquire the raw data used in this analysis. A multistate modeling approach in the Bayesian framework was used to estimate age-specific vital rates used in the integral projection model. The posterior estimates for calculating the age-specific vital rates of adults are contained in the file named "IPM_posterior_summary.rds". The demographic functions are parameterized using point estimates from previous modeling efforts that are defined in the R code and the posterior estimates from the multistate modeling approach that are loaded into the IPM through the R script. ...