Taxonomy-based hierarchical analysis of natural mortality: polar and sub-polar phocid seals

Knowledge of life‐history parameters is frequently lacking in many species and populations, often because they are cryptic or logistically challenging to study, but also because life‐history parameters can be difficult to estimate with adequate precision. We suggest using hierarchical Bayesian analysis (HBA) to analyze variation in life‐history parameters among related species, with prior variance components representing shared taxonomy, phenotypic plasticity, and observation error. We develop such a framework to analyze U‐shaped natural mortality patterns typical of mammalian life history from a variety of sparse datasets. Using 39 datasets from seals in the family Phocidae, we analyzed 16 models with different formulations for natural morality, specifically the amount of taxonomic and data‐level variance components (subfamily, species, study, and dataset levels) included in mortality hazard parameters. The highest‐ranked model according to DIC included subfamily‐, species‐, and datase...