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At least 415 records · Page 23Linked to original sources
USGS2006

A review of methods to estimate cause-specific mortality in presence of competing risks

Estimating cause-specific mortality is often of central importance for understanding the dynamics of wildlife populations. Despite such importance, methodology for estimating and analyzing cause-specific mortality has received little attention in wildlife ecology during the past 20 years. The issue of analyzing cause-specific, mutually exclusive events in time is not unique to wildlife. In fact, this general problem has received substantial attention in human biomedical applications within the context of biostatistical survival analysis. Here, we consider cause-specific mortality from a modern biostatistical perspective. This requires carefully defining what we mean by cause-specific mortality and then providing an appropriate hazard-based representation as a competing risks problem. This leads to the general solution of cause-specific mortality as the cumulative incidence function (CIF). We describe the appropriate generalization of the fully nonparametric staggered-entry Kaplan–Meier survival estimator to cause-specific mortality via the nonparametric CIF estimator (NPCIFE), which in many situations offers an attractive alternative to the Heisey–Fuller estimator. An advantage of the NPCIFE is that it lends itself readily to risk factors analysis with standard software for Cox proportional hazards model. The competing risks–based approach also clarifies issues regarding another intuitive but erroneous “cause-specific mortality” estimator based on the Kaplan–Meier survival estimator and commonly seen in the life sciences literature.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS2010

Ranking Alaska moose nutrition: Signals to begin liberal antlerless harvests

We focused on describing low nutritional status in an increasing moose ( Alces alces gigas ) population with reduced predation in Game Management Unit (GMU) 20A near Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. A skeptical public disallowed liberal antlerless harvests of this moose population until we provided convincing data on low nutritional status. We ranked nutritional status in 15 Alaska moose populations (in boreal forests and coastal tundra) based on multiyear twinning rates. Data on age-of-first-reproduction and parturition rates provided a ranking consistent with twinning rates in the 6 areas where comparative data were available. Also, short-yearling mass provided a ranking consistent with twinning rates in 5 of the 6 areas where data were available. Data from 5 areas implied an inverse relationship between twinning rate and browse removal rate. Only in GMU 20A did nutritional indices reach low levels where justification for halting population growth was apparent, which supports prior findings that nutrition is a minor factor limiting most Alaska moose populations compared to predation. With predator reductions, the GMU 20A moose population increased from 1976 until liberal antlerless harvests in 2004. During 1997–2005, GMU 20A moose exhibited the lowest nutritional status reported to date for wild, noninsular, North American populations, including 1) delayed reproduction until moose reached 36 months of age and the lowest parturition rate among 36-month-old moose (29%, n = 147); 2) the lowest average multiyear twinning rates from late-May aerial surveys ( x̄ = 7%, SE = 0.9%, n = 9 yr, range = 3–10%) and delayed twinning until moose reached 60 months of age; 3) the lowest average mass of female short-yearlings in Alaska ( x̄ = 155 ± 1.6 [SE] kg in the Tanana Flats subpopulation, up to 58 kg below average masses found elsewhere); and 4) high removal (42%) of current annual browse biomass compared to 9–26% elsewhere in boreal forests. When average multiyear twinning rates in GMU 20A (sampled during 1960–2005) declined to <10% in the mid- to late 1990s, we began encouraging liberal antlerless harvests, but only conservative annual harvests of 61–76 antlerless moose were achieved during 1996–2001. Using data in the context of our broader ranking system, we convinced skeptical citizen advisory committees to allow liberal antlerless harvests of 600–690 moose in 2004 and 2005, with the objective of halting population growth of the 16,000–17,000 moose; total harvests were 7–8% of total prehunt numbers. The resulting liberal antlerless harvests served to protect the moose population's health and habitat and to fulfill a mandate for elevated yield. Liberal antlerless harvests appear justified to halt population growth when multiyear twinning rates average ≤10% and ≥1 of the following signals substantiate low nutritional status: <50% of 36-month-old moose are parturient, average multiyear short-yearling mass is <175 kg, or >35% of annual browse biomass is removed by moose.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS2010

A simple solar radiation index for wildlife habitat studies

Solar radiation is a potentially important covariate in many wildlife habitat studies, but it is typically addressed only indirectly, using problematic surrogates like aspect or hillshade. We devised a simple solar radiation index (SRI) that combines readily available information about aspect, slope, and latitude. Our SRI is proportional to the amount of extraterrestrial solar radiation theoretically striking an arbitrarily oriented surface during the hour surrounding solar noon on the equinox. Because it derives from first geometric principles and is linearly distributed, SRI offers clear advantages over aspect-based surrogates. The SRI also is superior to hillshade, which we found to be sometimes imprecise and ill-behaved. To illustrate application of our SRI, we assessed niche separation among 3 ungulate species along a single environmental axis, solar radiation, on the northern Yellowstone winter range. We detected no difference between the niches occupied by bighorn sheep ( Ovis canadensis ) and elk ( Cervus elaphus; P = 0.104), but found that mule deer ( Odocoileus hemionus ) tended to use areas receiving more solar radiation than either of the other species ( P < 0.001). Overall, our SRI provides a useful metric that can reduce noise, improve interpretability, and increase parsimony in wildlife habitat models containing a solar radiation component.

Wyoming↗
USGS2010

Modeling distribution of dispersal distances in male white-tailed deer

Dispersal distances and their distribution pattern are important to understanding such phenomena as disease spread and gene flow, but oftentimes dispersal characteristics are modeled as a fixed trait for a given species. We found that dispersal distributions differ for spring and autumn dispersals of yearling male white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) but that combined data can be adequately modeled based on a log-normal distribution. We modeled distribution of dispersal distances from 3 distinct populations in Pennsylvania and Maryland, USA, based on the relationship between percent forest cover and mean dispersal distance and the relationship between mean and variance of dispersal distances. Our results suggest distributions of distances for dispersing yearling male white-tailed deer can be modeled by simply measuring a readily obtained landscape metric, percent forest cover, which could be used to create generalized spatially explicit disease or gene.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS2010

Habitat use by female mallards in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley

Mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) populations in the lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV), USA, historically averaged 1.6 million and represented the largest concentrations of wintering mallards in North America. Effective management of this wintering population requires current information on use of habitats. Accordingly, we employed radiotelemetry techniques to assess proportional use of habitats by female mallards during winters 2004-2005 and 2005-2006. We divided winters into 4 time periods defined by hunting seasons (FIRST, SPLIT, SECOND, and POST) and recorded diurnal and nocturnal locations. We examined variations in proportional use of habitats and use of areas closed to hunting due to effects of age (immature or ad), winter (2004-2005 or 2005-2006), time period (SECOND or POST), individual female, and all potential interactions of these effects, using locations recorded during the latter 2 time periods. We found that diurnal and nocturnal proportional use of habitats varied inconsistently among time periods and winters. Mean proportional use of forested wetlands ranged from 0.475 to 0.816 and from 0.428 to 0.764 during diurnal and nocturnal sampling periods, respectively. Diurnal proportional use of areas closed to hunting varied inconsistently among time periods and winters. Mean proportional use of areas closed to hunting ranged from 0.183 to 0.423 during diurnal sampling periods. Nocturnal use of areas closed to hunting varied inconsistently among female ages and time periods and among female ages and winters. Mean proportional use of areas closed to hunting ranged from 0.211 to 0.445 during nocturnal sampling periods. Our research suggests that forested wetlands in the LMAV provide important wintering habitats for female mallards; continued restoration and establishment of these habitats should benefit female mallards.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS1969

Establishing hunting regulations and allowable harvest of mallards in the United States

As a major part of establishing hunting regulations each year in the United States, data for the mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ) are examined extensively to estimate the effect of various harvest strategies on the breeding population the following spring. This requires estimates of the breeding-population level and of the production, harvest, and mortality rates. Predictions made at the time hunting regulations are established have been in general agreement with more reliable estimates made after the hunting season when data from banding, kill, and wing surveys are available.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS1979

The composite dynamic method as evidence for age-specific waterfowl mortality

For the past 25 years estimation of mortality rates for waterfowl has been based almost entirely on the composite dynamic life table. We examined the specific assumptions for this method and derived a valid goodness of fit test. We performed this test on 45 data sets representing a cross section of banded sampled for various waterfowl species, geographic areas, banding periods, and age/sex classes. We found that: (1) the composite dynamic method was rejected (P <0.001) in 37 of the 45 data sets (in fact, 29 were rejected at P <0.00001) and (2) recovery and harvest rates are year-specific (a critical violation of the necessary assumptions). We conclude that the restrictive assumptions required for the composite dynamic method to produce valid estimates of mortality rates are not met in waterfowl data. Also we demonstrate that even when the required assumptions are met, the method produces very biased estimates of age-specific mortality rates. We believe the composite dynamic method should not be used in the analysis of waterfowl banding data. Furthermore, the composite dynamic method does not provide valid evidence for age-specific mortality rates in waterfowl.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS1975

Gut morphology of mallards in relation to diet quality

Digestive organ lengths, weights, and volumes in each of three groups of mallards ( Anas platyrhynchos ) were determined at the end of a 21-day period, during which one group was starter (control diet), another group was fed whole corn (low fiber content), and the third fed alfalfa pellets (high fiber content) to demonstrate the adaptive efficiency of the waterfowl diets of varying quality. Food consumption by the alfalfa-fed ducks was significantly gr 0.01) than the other two groups. All digestive organs of the alfalfa-fed ducks were significan (P < 0.01) than those of the corn- and turkey starter-fed ducks at the end of the study. It is that mallards can adapt rapidly to fibrous, relatively indigestible foods. This ability may hav value when higher quality foods are unavailable or when food habits change rapidly duritions.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS1977

Organochlorine and mercury residues in canvasback duck eggs, 1972-73

Eggs of canvasback ducks (Aythya valisineria) from several major breeding areas were analyzed for organochlorine and mercury residues. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were detected in 96 of 97 eggs, in concentrations up to 29 ppm (wet wt.). DDE occurred in 79 percent of the samples with a maximum residue of 12 ppm (wet wt.). DDT, DDD, dieldrin, hexachlorobenzene, cis-chlordane, heptachlor epoxide, and oxychlordane were detected less frequently. Mercury was detected in only 6 of 34 eggs analyzed. Most of the eggs contained concentrations of organochlorines and mercury below levels known to cause adverse effects on avian survival or reproduction.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗
USGS1974

Feeding Ecology of Breeding Blue-Winged Teals

A 5-year investigation of factors influencing the selection of foods consumed by blue-winged teals ( Anas discors ) during the breeding season in the glaciated prairie region of south-central North Dakota showed that birds first arriving on the breeding grounds consumed a diet consisting of 45 percent invertebrates. The proportion of animal foods in the diet increased to 95 percent at the onset of the nesting season. The quality and quantity of foods selected at any given time were influenced by the biological demands and morphological adaptations of the bird, the behavior and ecology of the invertebrates selected as foods, and the general nature of the aquatic ecosystems as determined by the hydrology and geology of the area and modified by land use and weather. Feeding activities changed significantly when food availability within the aquatic ecosystem changed. During the spring and early summer, temporary and seasonal wetlands, if not severely disturbed, were of paramount importance to breeding blue-winged teals since they provided abundant and readily available, high protein, animal foods. Later in the summer when seasonal wetlands began to dry up, insects began to emerge in the semipermanent ponds and lakes, and feeding intensity shifted to these more permanent waters. This trend, however, was often reversed temporarily during the early summer following heavy precipitation that refilled shallow water areas and again stimulated invertebrate development.

North Dakota↗
USGS1984

Estimating the effect of hunting on annual survival rates of adult mallards

Management programs for waterfowl populations include rationale for, and establishment of, hunting regulations. These programs rest partially on the results of scientific studies on the effect of harvest rates on annual survival rates. The evidence of this relationship has changed markedly since the mid-1970's, and it is not widely believed that a largely compensatory relationship exists between hunting mortality and other forms of mortality for the mallard ( Anas platyrhynchos ). This paper employs a general probabilistic model formulated to include a parameter (b) representing a continuum between complete compensation (b=0) and total additivity (b=1). Maximum likelihood estimates of this parameter were computer for 47 data sets of adult mallards banded throughout North American before hunting commenced. We found additional evidence of a highly compensatory mortality process for adult male mallards, while the evidence for adults female mallards remains inconclusive. Effective harvest, land acquisition, and land management programs depend upon additional information on the chronology and mechanisms underlying a compensatory mortality process.

Journal of Wildlife Management↗