A hierarchical model for jointly assessing ecological and anthropogenic impacts on animal demography

1. The management of sustainable harvest of animal populations is of great ecological and conservation importance. Development of formal quantitative tools to estimate and mitigate the impacts of harvest on animal populations has positively impacted conservation efforts.
2. The vast majority of existing harvest models, however, do not simultaneously estimate ecological and harvest impacts on demographic parameters and population trends. Given that the impacts of ecological drivers are often equal to or greater than the effects of harvest, and can covary with harvest, this disconnect has the potential to lead to flawed inference.
3. In this study, we used Bayesian hierarchical models and a 43-year capture-mark-recovery dataset from 404,241 female mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) released in the North American midcontinent to estimate mallard demographic parameters. Further, we model the dynamics of waterfowl hunters and habitat, and the direct and indirect effects of anthropogenic and ecolo...

1. 野生动物种群可持续收获管理具备极高的生态学与保护学价值。开发用于评估并缓解收获活动对野生动物种群影响的规范化定量工具，已对保护实践产生积极推动作用。
2. 然而，绝大多数现有收获模型无法同时评估生态驱动因素与收获活动对种群统计参数及种群动态趋势的影响。考虑到生态驱动因素的影响往往等同于甚至超过收获活动的效应，且可能与收获活动存在协变关系，这种模型的局限性可能导致推断结果存在偏差。
3. 本研究采用贝叶斯分层模型（Bayesian hierarchical models），结合采自北美中部大陆区域的43年标记重捕（capture-mark-recovery）数据集——该数据集涵盖404241只雌性绿头鸭（Anas platyrhynchos）——来估算绿头鸭的种群统计参数。此外，本研究还构建了水禽猎手与栖息地的动态模型，并对人为因素与生态因素的直接、间接影响进行建模，……