New Methods for Avian Distribution and Abundance Estimation
March 31, 2011
2:30 p.m.
Bret Collier
Abstract
As a practicing wildlife ecologist who works with endangered birds, my work on parameter estimation is focused at better predicting species distributions and local abundance. Recently, distribution modeling has focused on addressing how heterogeneous detection rates and spatial relatedness in species locations influence distribution predictions. I will discuss some of my recent work using penalized spline smoothing in a hierarchical framework to better predict endangered species distributions. Additionally, I will discuss a new development in mark-recapture distance sampling focused on avian abundance estimation at local scales. Under the mark-recapture distance sampling framework, I will demonstrate how observation dependence can induce negative bias in abundance estimates. I will outline a new MRDS joint likelihood and provide an example showing the magnitude of this bias using data from the endangered Golden-cheeked warbler in Texas.