Bayesian hierarchical model assessment of nest site and landscape effects on nest survival of aplomado falcons

Abstract

We investigated potential effects of nest site and landscape scale factors, including anthropogenic disturbance and habitat patchiness, on the nesting success of a reintroduced population of northern aplomado falcons (Falco femoralis septentrionalis) in southern Texas. We monitored 62 nesting attempts during 2002–2004 in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. We developed hierarchical models describing daily nest survival rates (DSR) and compared the models using a Bayesian approach in R and WinBUGS. We considered possible effects of nest age, temporal trends, nest site variables, landscape structure, territory (a random effect), and 3 measures of anthropogenic disturbance: distance to paved road, proximity to power pole, and nocturnal light intensity. Whether evaluated by Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) scores or the models' overall posterior probabilities as estimated with a reversible jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, none of our landscape or disturbance measures affected DSR. Rather, variation in DSR was best described by nest height, overhead cover, and nest source (artificial or natural). These nest site level factors may be manipulated by managers through provision of artificial nests. We recommend that artificial nests continue to be provided, as such nests are highly successful when located on moderately tall substrates, and they permit researchers to access nest contents for population monitoring. © 2011 The Wildlife Society.

Habitat Selection and Factors Influencing Nest Survival of Golden Eagles in South-Central Montana

“…We used an information-theoretic approach for model selection in which we ranked competing models using the Deviance Information Criteria (DIC; Spiegelhalter et al 2002). We used a modeling approach similar to Brown and Collopy (2012) in which we first separated the models into three categories: (1) Year, (2) Landscape, and (3) Disturbance. We tested year first to see whether differences existed between years in the estimated DSR and whether we need to consider such differences in subsequent models.…”

“…2012). We used hierarchical models in a Bayesian framework to test the influence of our covariates on DSR (Royle and Dorazio 2008, Schmidt et al 2010, Brown and Collopy 2012. DSR was expressed as independent Bernoulli trials each day, for each nest over the course of the nesting season.…”

Life‐history tradeoffs revealed by seasonal declines in reproductive traits of Arctic‐breeding shorebirds

“…To estimate DSR while correcting for potential bias introduced by nests that were lost before discovery by an observer, we adapted our basic model (Supplementary material Appendix 1) with daily nest survival models originally developed by Mayfield (1961) and extended by others (Johnson 1979, Bart and Robson 1982, Dinsmore et al 2002, Rotella 2007. Bayesian implementations of daily nest survival models have been recently described (Royle and Dorazio 2008, Schmidt et al 2010, Brown and Collopy 2012. We expanded the Bayesian DSR model to explicitly estimate cause-specific rates of nest failure so that we could test for seasonality in competing risks as well as DSR.…”

Estimating raptor nesting success: Old and new approaches

“…Thus far, the newer nest survival models have been used mainly for waterfowl, shorebirds, and passerines that nest on or near the ground (Dinsmore et al , Jehle et al , Rotella et al , Shaffer ). To date, relatively few, mostly short‐term, intensive studies of raptors have used nest survival models (Lantz and Conway , Martin et al , Briggs et al , Brown and Collopy , McIntyre and Schmidt ).…”