Abstract
Estimating animal abundance is an area of interest for many conservationists and population ecologists. When using count data to obtain abundance estimates, issues of imperfect detection must be taken into account. The N-mixture model proposed by Royle (Biometrics, 60(1), 108–115, 2004) provides a solution to this issue by incorporating detection probability in the estimate of abundance. We examine the original N-mixture model and assess its uses, advantages and assumptions. We then examine extensions to this vanilla N-mixture model which allow for the estimation of abundance using a range of data unsupported by the original model, including data that contain observations of multiple animals, data that contain large numbers of zero-counts and data that are collected over long periods of time. We finish by illustrating the applicability of both the original N-mixture model and a model proposed for multiple species collected over several years (Mimnagh et al., Environmental and Ecological Statistics, 1–24, 2022) by estimating foraging populations for bee species from data collected in 2016 and 2019 as part of the BeeWalk Survey in the UK.
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Acknowledgements
Niamh Mimnagh’s work was supported by a Science Foundation Ireland grant number 18/CRT/6049. The opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Science Foundation Ireland. Andrew Parnell’s work was also supported by an investigator award (16/IA/4520), a Marine Research Programme funded by the Irish Government, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (Grant-Aid Agreement No. PBA/CC/18/01), European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 818144), SFI Centre for Research Training 18CRT/6049 and SFI Research Centre award 16/RC/3872.
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Mimnagh, N., Parnell, A., Prado, E. (2023). Bayesian N-Mixture Models Applied to Estimating Insect Abundance. In: A. Moral, R., Godoy, W.A. (eds) Modelling Insect Populations in Agricultural Landscapes. Entomology in Focus, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43098-5_10
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