Week 9

Day 1

Today

In Class Discussion of led by James and Mairin (link)

1. Why is it important to account for different causes of nest failure rather than simply modeling nest success?

2. What is the benefit to using a hierarchical multinomial model rather than more traditional nest-survival approaches?

3. How did you feel about the simulation procedures the authors conducted? Overall, did they make sense?

4. Do you think the simulations prove the model works well under realistic field conditions?

5. What happens when heterogeneity among sites is left unmodeled? Of these consequences what is the one you would be most worried about and why?

6. What are the pitfalls to calculating daily nest survival with the assumption that nest survival is constant in between checks? What is an example of this assumption being violated?

7. How might management recommendations regarding predator exclosures have changed if the authors had only modeled nest-survival rather than cause-specific nest-failure?

8. Do you think the authors did a convincing job of their reasoning for using a Bayesian structure instead of a frequentist framework? Why or why not?

9. Besides cause-specific nest-survival, what other questions/data could this modeling framework be applied to in your field of interest?

Board work defining the occupancy model hierarchically

Day 2 (lab)

Today

• Board work defining occupancy model and JAGS syntax

• Downloads: Lab Files

• Install R packages:

# CRAN packages
install.packages(c("ubms","unmarked"))

• Readings for next class:
  • Student led discussion paper
  • Guillera‐Arroita et al. 2015
• Background Reading (not required):
  • Soley-Guardia et al. 2024
  • Valavi et al. 2021 (assessment of modeling methods).
  • Moudry et al. 2024 (data considerations).