Estimating animal abundance with n-mixture models using the r-inla package for r
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Statistics ProgramComputer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division
Date
2020Preprint Posting Date
2017-05-03Submitted Date
2017-04-26Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/626491
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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, under appropriate conditions, produce abundance estimates that are less biased. Here, we demonstrate how to use the R-INLA package for R to analyze N-mixture models, and compare performance of R-INLA to two other common approaches: JAGS (via the runjags package for R), which uses Markov chain Monte Carlo and allows Bayesian inference, and the unmarked package for R, which uses maximum likelihood and allows frequentist inference. We show that R-INLA is an attractive option for analyzing N-mixture models when (i) fast computing times are necessary (R-INLA is 10 times faster than unmarked and 500 times faster than JAGS), (ii) familiar model syntax and data format (relative to other R packages) is desired, (iii) survey-level covariates of detection are not essential, and (iv) Bayesian inference is preferred.Citation
Meehan, T. D., Michel, N. L., & Rue, H. (2020). Estimating Animal Abundance with N-Mixture Models Using the R-INLA Package for R. Journal of Statistical Software, 95(2). doi:10.18637/jss.v095.i02Publisher
Foundation for Open Access StatisticJournal
Journal of Statistical SoftwarearXiv
1705.01581Additional Links
http://www.jstatsoft.org/v95/i02/ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.18637/jss.v095.i02
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