Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors
This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Ecologists quantify animal diets using direct and indirect methods, including analysis of faeces, pellets, prey...
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ftunivexeter:oai:ore.exeter.ac.uk:10871/122531 2024-09-15T18:05:28+00:00 Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors Swan, GJF Bearhop, S Redpath, SM Silk, MJ Goodwin, CED Inger, R McDonald, RA 2019 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/122531 https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13311 en eng Wiley Vol. 11 (1), pp. 139 - 149 doi:10.1111/2041-210X.13311 3190800 310820 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/122531 2041-210X Methods in Ecology and Evolution © 2019 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ animal diet bayesian mixing models bayesian stable isotope mixing models informative priors stable isotopes trophic discrimination factors Article 2019 ftunivexeter https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13311 2024-07-29T03:24:13Z This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Ecologists quantify animal diets using direct and indirect methods, including analysis of faeces, pellets, prey items and gut contents. For stable isotope analyses of diet, Bayesian stable isotope mixing models (BSIMMs) are increasingly used to infer the relative importance of food sources to consumers. Although a powerful approach, it has been hard to test BSIMM performance for wild animals because precise, direct dietary data are difficult to collect. We evaluated the performance of BSIMMs in quantifying animal diets when using δ13C and δ15N stable isotope ratios from the feathers and red blood cells of common buzzard Buteo buteo chicks. We analysed mixing model outcomes with various trophic discrimination factors (TDFs), with and without informative priors, and compared these to direct observations of prey provisioned to chicks by adults at nests, using remote cameras. Although BSIMMs with different TDFs varied markedly in their performance, the statistical package SIDER generated TDFs for both feathers and blood that resulted in model outputs that accorded well with direct observations of prey provisioning. Using feather TDFs derived from captive peregrines Falco peregrinus resulted in estimates of diet composition that were also similar to provisioned prey, although blood TDFs from the same study performed poorly. The inclusion of informative priors, based on conventional analysis of pellet and prey remains, markedly reduced model performance. BSIMMs can provide accurate assessments of diet in wild animals. TDF estimates from the SIDER package performed well. The inclusion of informative priors from conventional methods in Bayesian mixing models can transfer biases into model outcomes, leading to erroneous results. University of Exeter CONICYT ERC Article in Journal/Newspaper Falco peregrinus University of Exeter: Open Research Exeter (ORE) Methods in Ecology and Evolution 11 1 139 149 |
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Open Polar |
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University of Exeter: Open Research Exeter (ORE) |
op_collection_id |
ftunivexeter |
language |
English |
topic |
animal diet bayesian mixing models bayesian stable isotope mixing models informative priors stable isotopes trophic discrimination factors |
spellingShingle |
animal diet bayesian mixing models bayesian stable isotope mixing models informative priors stable isotopes trophic discrimination factors Swan, GJF Bearhop, S Redpath, SM Silk, MJ Goodwin, CED Inger, R McDonald, RA Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
topic_facet |
animal diet bayesian mixing models bayesian stable isotope mixing models informative priors stable isotopes trophic discrimination factors |
description |
This is the final version. Available from Wiley via the DOI in this record. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. Ecologists quantify animal diets using direct and indirect methods, including analysis of faeces, pellets, prey items and gut contents. For stable isotope analyses of diet, Bayesian stable isotope mixing models (BSIMMs) are increasingly used to infer the relative importance of food sources to consumers. Although a powerful approach, it has been hard to test BSIMM performance for wild animals because precise, direct dietary data are difficult to collect. We evaluated the performance of BSIMMs in quantifying animal diets when using δ13C and δ15N stable isotope ratios from the feathers and red blood cells of common buzzard Buteo buteo chicks. We analysed mixing model outcomes with various trophic discrimination factors (TDFs), with and without informative priors, and compared these to direct observations of prey provisioned to chicks by adults at nests, using remote cameras. Although BSIMMs with different TDFs varied markedly in their performance, the statistical package SIDER generated TDFs for both feathers and blood that resulted in model outputs that accorded well with direct observations of prey provisioning. Using feather TDFs derived from captive peregrines Falco peregrinus resulted in estimates of diet composition that were also similar to provisioned prey, although blood TDFs from the same study performed poorly. The inclusion of informative priors, based on conventional analysis of pellet and prey remains, markedly reduced model performance. BSIMMs can provide accurate assessments of diet in wild animals. TDF estimates from the SIDER package performed well. The inclusion of informative priors from conventional methods in Bayesian mixing models can transfer biases into model outcomes, leading to erroneous results. University of Exeter CONICYT ERC |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Swan, GJF Bearhop, S Redpath, SM Silk, MJ Goodwin, CED Inger, R McDonald, RA |
author_facet |
Swan, GJF Bearhop, S Redpath, SM Silk, MJ Goodwin, CED Inger, R McDonald, RA |
author_sort |
Swan, GJF |
title |
Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
title_short |
Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
title_full |
Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
title_fullStr |
Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evaluating Bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
title_sort |
evaluating bayesian stable isotope mixing models of wild animal diet and the effects of trophic discrimination factors and informative priors |
publisher |
Wiley |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10871/122531 https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13311 |
genre |
Falco peregrinus |
genre_facet |
Falco peregrinus |
op_relation |
Vol. 11 (1), pp. 139 - 149 doi:10.1111/2041-210X.13311 3190800 310820 http://hdl.handle.net/10871/122531 2041-210X Methods in Ecology and Evolution |
op_rights |
© 2019 The Authors. Methods in Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.13311 |
container_title |
Methods in Ecology and Evolution |
container_volume |
11 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
139 |
op_container_end_page |
149 |
_version_ |
1810443022515568640 |