The Risk of Flawed Inference in Evolutionary Studies When Detectability Is Less than One

Giménez, Olivier; Viallefont, Anne; Charmantier, Anne; Pradel, Roger; Cam, Emmanuelle; Brown, Charles R.; Anderson, Mark D.; Brown, Mary Bomberger; Covas, Rita; Gaillard, Jean‐Michel

doi:10.1086/589520

Cited by 98 publications

(103 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The approach can be extended to more general situations with a larger number of experience classes, but the influence of age and experience can be separated only in age-classes, where several levels of experience are represented. Moreover, wild vertebrate population studies where detection probability is very high are not so common [8]. For this reason, development of approaches designed to update the number of experience events when the animal is not seen will allow other investigators to address questions about ontogeny and life-history evolution in species, where learning may play an important part in determining fitness [1].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Now you see him, now you don't: experience, not age, is related to reproduction in kittiwakes

et al. 2011

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In long-lived species, individuals can skip reproduction. The proportion of breeders affects population growth rate and viability, there is a need to investigate the factors influencing intermittent breeding. The theory predicts that if lack of experience is an important constraint, breeding probabilities should increase with experience for individuals of the same age, whereas under the so-called restraint hypothesis, breeding probabilities should increase with age regardless of experience. However, because the probability of detecting individuals in the wild is generally less than 1, it is difficult to know exactly the number of previous breeding episodes (breeding experience). To cope with this issue, we developed a hidden process model to incorporate experience as a latent state possibly influencing the probability of breeding. Using a 22-year mark-recapture dataset involving 9970 individuals, we analysed simultaneously experience and age effects on breeding probabilities in the kittiwake (Rissa tridactyla). We did not detect an influence of age on adult breeding probabilities. We found that inexperienced birds breed less frequently than experienced birds. Our approach enables us to highlight the key role of experience on adults breeding probabilities and can be used for a wide range of organisms for which detection is less than 1.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Until now, the majority of previous studies reporting age-related differences in life-history traits of wild vertebrates could not disentangle age and experience effects because of the issue of detection of less than 1 inherent to studies in the wild [8]: what is the state of an unobserved individual? Is it alive or not?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Now you see him, now you don't: experience, not age, is related to reproduction in kittiwakes

et al. 2011

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“…The method used in the original studies to estimate survival (CMR or not) is known to influence the estimation of senescence patterns (Gimenez et al 2008): CMR studies are considered less biased than non-CMR studies. Hence, we included 'method' as a fixed effect in our models.…”

Section: (C) Data Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age at the onset of senescence in birds and mammals is predicted by early-life performance

et al. 2010

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Life-history theory predicts that traits involved in maturity, reproduction and survival correlate along a fast-slow continuum of life histories. Evolutionary theories and empirical results indicate that senescence-related traits vary along this continuum, with slow species senescing later and at a slower pace than fast species. Because senescence patterns are typically difficult to estimate from studies in the wild, here we propose to predict the associated trait values in the frame of life-history theory. From a comparative analysis based on 81 free-ranging populations of 72 species of birds and mammals, we find that a nonlinear combination of fecundity, age at first reproduction and survival over the immature stage can account for ca two-thirds of the variance in the age at the onset of actuarial senescence. Our life-history model performs better than a model predicting the onset based on generation time, and it only includes life-history traits during early life as explanatory variables, i.e. parameters that are both theoretically expected to shape senescence and are measurable within relatively short studies. We discuss the goodfit of our life-history model to the available data in the light of current evolutionary theories of senescence. We further use it to evaluate whether studies that provided no evidence for senescence lasted long enough to include the onset of senescence.

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“…Ratcliffe et al (2008) demonstrated a promising approach, termed 'virtual seabird' modeling, to estimating population size in a tropical seabird with protracted breeding. The rapid development of data modeling techniques that extend CMR ideas into multi-state models (White et al 2006, Lebreton et al 2009) and spacestate models (Gimenez et al 2008, Patterson et al 2008 opens new avenues for unbiased estimation of demographic variables, including immature survival/ -recruitment (Jenouvrier et al 2008, Votier et al 2008a). Likewise, genetic approaches relevant at the spatiotemporal scale of population demography are now being deployed to estimate immigration/emigration rates (Milot et al 2008, Peery et al 2008, Boessenkool et al 2009).…”

Section: Population Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, estimating heritability and separating phenotypic plasticity from microevolution in wild animals is challenging, particularly because detectability (e.g. recapture or resighting probability) is generally less than one (Gimenez et al 2008). The most promising approach is based on long-term studies with extensive pedigree information, but such studies are rare (Doligez et al 2009, Ozgul et al 2009).…”

Section: Global Change and Population Response To Environmental Variamentioning

confidence: 99%

Research priorities for seabirds: improving conservation and management in the 21st century

Lewison¹,

Oró²,

Godley³

et al. 2012

Endang. Species. Res.

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The Risk of Flawed Inference in Evolutionary Studies When Detectability Is Less than One

Cited by 98 publications

References 41 publications

Now you see him, now you don't: experience, not age, is related to reproduction in kittiwakes

Now you see him, now you don't: experience, not age, is related to reproduction in kittiwakes

Age at the onset of senescence in birds and mammals is predicted by early-life performance

Research priorities for seabirds: improving conservation and management in the 21st century

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