Jorge A. Martínez‐Villegas, Irene Pisanty, Carlos Martorell, Mariana Hernández‐Apolinar, Teresa Valverde, Luisa A. Granados‐Hernández, Mariana Rodríguez‐Sánchez, J. Jaime Zúñiga‐Vega
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Detection of plant individuals is imperfect. Not accounting for this issue can result in biased estimates of demographic parameters as important as population growth rates. In mobile organisms, a common practice is to explicitly account for detection probability during the estimation of most demographic parameters, but no study in plant populations has examined the consequences of ignoring imperfect detectability on the estimation of population growth rates. The lack of accounting for detection probability occurs because plant demographers have frequently assumed that detection is perfect, and because there is a scarcity of studies that formally compare the performance of estimation methods that incorporate detection probabilities with respect to methods that ignore detectabilities. Based on field data of five plant species and data simulations, we compared the performance of three methods that estimate population growth rates, two that do not estimate detection probabilities (direct counts of individuals and the minimum‐number‐alive method) and the other that explicitly accounts for detection probabilities (temporal symmetry models). Our aims were 1) to estimate detection probabilities, and 2) to evaluate the performance of these three methods by calculating bias, accuracy, and precision in their estimates of population growth rates. Our five plant species had imperfect detection. Estimates of population growth rates that explicitly incorporate detectabilities had better performance (less biased estimates, with higher accuracy and precision) than those obtained with the two methods that do not calculate detection probabilities. In these latter methods, bias increases as detection probability decreases. Our findings highlight the importance of using robust analytical methods that account for detection probability of plants during the estimation of critical demographic parameters such as population growth rates. In this way, estimates of plant population parameters will reliably indicate their actual status and quantitative trends.
期刊介绍:
Oikos publishes original and innovative research on all aspects of ecology, defined as organism-environment interactions at various spatiotemporal scales, so including macroecology and evolutionary ecology. Emphasis is on theoretical and empirical work aimed at generalization and synthesis across taxa, systems and ecological disciplines. Papers can contribute to new developments in ecology by reporting novel theory or critical empirical results, and "synthesis" can include developing new theory, tests of general hypotheses, or bringing together established or emerging areas of ecology. Confirming or extending the established literature, by for example showing results that are novel for a new taxon, or purely applied research, is given low priority.