Effects of Model Formulation on Estimates of Health in Individual Right Whales (Eubalaena glacialis).
Book Section
Right whales are vulnerable to many sources of anthropogenic disturbance including ship strikes, entanglement with fishing gear, and anthropogenic noise. The effect of these factors on individual health is unclear. A statistical model using photographic evidence of health was recently built to infer the true or hidden health of individual right whales. However, two important prior assumptions about the role of missing data and unexplained variance on the estimates were not previously assessed. Here we tested these factors by varying prior assumptions and model formulation. We found sensitivity to each assumption and used the output to make guidelines on future model formulation.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Schick, RS; Kraus, SD; Rolland, RM; Knowlton, AR; Hamilton, PK; Pettis, HM; Thomas, L; Harwood, J; Clark, JS
Published Date
- January 2016
Volume / Issue
- 875 /
Start / End Page
- 977 - 985
PubMed ID
- 26611058
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1007/978-1-4939-2981-8_121