Six parameters for the census model in a single year and their hyper-parameters across years.

• Main Authors: Richard Condit (114548), Sarah G. Allen (11993642), Daniel P. Costa (7359032), Sarah Codde (11993645), P. Dawn Goley (11993648), Burney J. Le Boeuf (11993651), Mark S. Lowry (11993654), Patricia Morris (11993657)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Evolutionary Biology; Ecology; Inorganic Chemistry; Environmental Sciences not elsewhere classified; Biological Sciences not elsewhere classified; particularly colonial birds; yield total population; total population size; produce population estimates; single count throughout; one count captures; female population size; several additional colonies; northern elephant seals; asynchronous breeding phenology; estimating population size; years within sites; many seasonal species; female count; many years; elephant seals; entire population; single site; seasonal breeders; one day; asynchronous species; yet studied; xlink ">; seven colonies; quantifying asynchrony; minimized error; minimal expenditure; facilitate monitoring; correction factors; correction factor; common problem; 5 days; 30 jan; 2 days; 15 yielded; &# 241; Elephant Seals
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262214.t001

The six main parameters are subscripted since there is one for every year i each colony has a separate set. The population size had no hyper-parameters, meaning every year’s population was independent, and the two parameters describing tenure had hyper-parameters fixed in advance as narrow priors ( μ d = 31.06, σ d = 0.27, μ v = 0.1212, σ v = 0.0062), a requirement for fitting the model [ 4 ]. The remaining parameters had Gaussian hyper-distributions estimated from the data. In a model covering Y years of censuses, 6 Y + 10 parameters are needed: 6 Y main parameters (6 per year) plus 10 hyper-parameters.