Item Details

title

Multiple-Species Models for True Abundances Allowing for Heterogeneity of Capture Between and Within Species

author

Dixon, Kari Crowell

abstract

In any ecological community, the probabilities for observance (capture) of individual animals often differ both within and between species. Previous research involving multiple species' abundances have largely ignored this fact. In this paper, we explore the use of finite mixture modeling to quantify species' true abundances within a population while allowing for unknown differences in the individuals' capture probabilities. This modeling also allows us to develop diversity and evenness measures based on true abundances of species. Our methods are shown to be applicable in both the capture/recapture and removal sampling settings. We demonstrate our methods with a fisheries removal example; our techniques are then applied to several other fisheries data sets. We evaluate our methods on a series of test data sets we constructed using empirical probabilities of capture. Finally, multiple simulations were run to create data sets from generating models and check the main features of the models, especially abundance estimates and species' parameters.

subject

capture-recapture

finite mixtures

species abundances

contributor

Norris, James L (committee chair)

Berenhaut, Kenneth S (committee member)

Erway, Jennifer (committee member)

date

2013-08-23T08:35:15Z (accessioned)

2013 (issued)

degree

Mathematics (discipline)

embargo

forever (terms)

10000-01-01 (liftdate)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/39016 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

type

Thesis