Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species
We propose a method to model the physiological link between somatic survival and reproductive output that reduces the number of parameters that need to be estimated by models designed to determine combinations of birth and death rates that produce historic counts of animal populations. We applied ou...
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ftrepec:oai:RePEc:plo:pone00:0077389 2024-04-14T08:18:22+00:00 Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species Brian C Battaile Andrew W Trites https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389&type=printable unknown https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389&type=printable article ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:30:01Z We propose a method to model the physiological link between somatic survival and reproductive output that reduces the number of parameters that need to be estimated by models designed to determine combinations of birth and death rates that produce historic counts of animal populations. We applied our Reproduction and Somatic Survival Linked (RSSL) method to the population counts of three species of North Pacific pinnipeds (harbor seals, Phoca vitulina richardii (Gray, 1864); northern fur seals, Callorhinus ursinus (L., 1758); and Steller sea lions, Eumetopias jubatus (Schreber, 1776))—and found our model outperformed traditional models when fitting vital rates to common types of limited datasets, such as those from counts of pups and adults. However, our model did not perform as well when these basic counts of animals were augmented with additional observations of ratios of juveniles to total non-pups. In this case, the failure of the ratios to improve model performance may indicate that the relationship between survival and reproduction is redefined or disassociated as populations change over time or that the ratio of juveniles to total non-pups is not a meaningful index of vital rates. Overall, our RSSL models show advantages to linking survival and reproduction within models to estimate the vital rates of pinnipeds and other species that have limited time-series of counts. Article in Journal/Newspaper Phoca vitulina Callorhinus ursinus RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Pacific |
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RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) |
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We propose a method to model the physiological link between somatic survival and reproductive output that reduces the number of parameters that need to be estimated by models designed to determine combinations of birth and death rates that produce historic counts of animal populations. We applied our Reproduction and Somatic Survival Linked (RSSL) method to the population counts of three species of North Pacific pinnipeds (harbor seals, Phoca vitulina richardii (Gray, 1864); northern fur seals, Callorhinus ursinus (L., 1758); and Steller sea lions, Eumetopias jubatus (Schreber, 1776))—and found our model outperformed traditional models when fitting vital rates to common types of limited datasets, such as those from counts of pups and adults. However, our model did not perform as well when these basic counts of animals were augmented with additional observations of ratios of juveniles to total non-pups. In this case, the failure of the ratios to improve model performance may indicate that the relationship between survival and reproduction is redefined or disassociated as populations change over time or that the ratio of juveniles to total non-pups is not a meaningful index of vital rates. Overall, our RSSL models show advantages to linking survival and reproduction within models to estimate the vital rates of pinnipeds and other species that have limited time-series of counts. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Brian C Battaile Andrew W Trites |
spellingShingle |
Brian C Battaile Andrew W Trites Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
author_facet |
Brian C Battaile Andrew W Trites |
author_sort |
Brian C Battaile |
title |
Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
title_short |
Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
title_full |
Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
title_fullStr |
Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
title_full_unstemmed |
Linking Reproduction and Survival Can Improve Model Estimates of Vital Rates Derived from Limited Time-Series Counts of Pinnipeds and Other Species |
title_sort |
linking reproduction and survival can improve model estimates of vital rates derived from limited time-series counts of pinnipeds and other species |
url |
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389&type=printable |
geographic |
Pacific |
geographic_facet |
Pacific |
genre |
Phoca vitulina Callorhinus ursinus |
genre_facet |
Phoca vitulina Callorhinus ursinus |
op_relation |
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077389&type=printable |
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