Estimating arthropod survival probability from field counts: a case study with monarch butterflies
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Survival probability is fundamental for understanding population dynamics. Methods for estimating survival probability from field data typically require marking individuals, but marking methods are not possible for arthropod species that molt their exoskeleton between life stages. We developed a novel Bayesian state‐space model to estimate arthropod larval survival probability from stage‐structured count data. We performed simulation studies to evaluate estimation bias due to detection probability, individual variation in stage duration, and study design (sampling frequency and sample size). Estimation of cumulative survival probability from oviposition to pupation was robust to potential sources of bias. Our simulations also provide guidance for designing field studies with minimal bias. We applied the model to the monarch butterfly ( Danaus plexippus ), a declining species in North America for which conservation programs are being implemented. We estimated cumulative survival from egg to pupation from monarch counts conducted at 18 field sites in three landcover types in Iowa, USA, and Ontario, Canada: road right‐of‐ways, natural habitats (gardens and restored meadows), and agricultural field borders. Mean predicted survival probability across all landcover types was 0.014 (95% CI: 0.004–0.024), four times lower than previously published estimates using an ad hoc estimator. Estimated survival probability ranged from 0.002 (95% CI: 7.0E−7 to 0.034) to 0.058 (95% CI: 0.013–0.113) at individual sites. Among landcover types, agricultural field borders in Ontario had the highest estimated survival probability (0.025 with 95% CI: 0.008–0.043) and natural areas had the lowest estimated survival probability (0.008 with 95% CI: 0.009–0.024). Monarch production was estimated as adults produced per milkweed stem by multiplying survival probabilities by eggs per milkweed at these sites. Monarch production ranged from 1.0 (standard deviation [SD] = 0.68) adult in Ontario natural areas in 2016 to 29.0 (SD = 10.42) adults in Ontario agricultural borders in 2015 per 6809 milkweed stems. Survival estimates are critical to monarch population modeling and habitat restoration efforts. Our model is a significant advance in estimating survival probability for monarch butterflies and can be readily adapted to other arthropod species with stage‐structured life histories.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".