Estimating animal abundance with N-mixture models using the R-INLA package for R

Abstract

Successful management of wildlife populations requires accurate estimates of abundance. Abundance estimates can be confounded by imperfect detection during wildlife surveys. N-mixture models enable quantification of detection probability and often produce abundance estimates that are less biased. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the use of the R-INLA package to analyze N-mixture models and to compare performance of R-INLA to two other common approaches -- JAGS (via the runjags package), which uses Markov chain Monte Carlo and allows Bayesian inference, and unmarked, which uses Maximum Likelihood and allows frequentist inference. We show that R-INLA is an attractive option for analyzing N-mixture models when (1) familiar model syntax and data format (relative to other R packages) are desired, (2) survey level covariates of detection are not essential, (3) fast computing times are necessary (R-INLA is 10 times faster than unmarked, 300 times faster than JAGS), and (4) Bayesian inference is preferred.