Species Richness Anlysis

[lmpaine]

I've read the couple of bits about species richness (SR) in the occupancy modeling book, which led me to these question. Other than analysing the extinction and colonization rates of patches, is there another variable that can be measured using SR patch occupancy in PRESENCE? Can I use the program to tell me the probabilities of unique patches containing X% of the known total SR for the entire study area?

[darryl]

In theory: possibly. We've thought of a couple of different ways in which you might apply these types of models to estimating species richness, as we've outlined in the book, but it's not something we've had the opportunity to think really hard about just yet. Some of these approaches could be done within PRESENCE, some might be better suited to using Bayesian software like WinBUGS. There's a couple of key papers we cite in that chapter that you might want to look up if you're interested in learning more. At this stage though, it's not an analysis for the faint-hearted (ie you can't just point and click and read off a magic number).

Darryl

[bschmidt]

Here's a paper that may answer some of your questions:

Title: Estimating size and composition of biological communities by modeling the occurrence of species
Author(s): Dorazio RM, Royle JA
Source: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION Volume: 100 Issue: 470 Pages: 389-398 Published: JUN 2005
Abstract: We develop a model that uses repeated observations of a biological community to estimate the number and composition of species in the community. Estimators of community-level attributes are constructed from model-based estimators of occurrence of individual species that incorporate imperfect detection of individuals. Data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey are analyzed to illustrate the variety of ecologically important quantities that are easily constructed and estimated using our model-based estimators of species occurrence. In particular, we compute site-specific estimates of species richness that honor classical notions of species-area relationships. We suggest extensions of our model to estimate maps of occurrence of individual species and to compute inferences related to the temporal and spatial dynamics of biological communities.

Best wishes, Benedikt