Occupancy modeling species-environment relationships with non-ignorable survey designs.

ABSTRACT: Statistical models supporting inferences about species occurrence patterns in relation to environmental gradients are fundamental to ecology and conservation biology. A common implicit assumption is that the sampling design is ignorable and does not need to be formally accounted for in analyses. The analyst assumes data are representative of the desired population and statistical modeling proceeds. However, if data sets from probability and non-probability surveys are combined or unequal selection probabilities are used, the design may be non-ignorable. We outline the use of pseudo-maximum likelihood estimation for site-occupancy models to account for such non-ignorable survey designs. This estimation method accounts for the survey design by properly weighting the pseudo-likelihood equatio

SUBMITTER: Irvine KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6457115 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature