Estimating population range distributions from animal tracking data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
1. Quantifying the space requirements of a population is a fundamental problem in spatial ecology, particularly as it relates to the identification of important utilization areas and the designation of protected areas for conservation and wildlife management. 2. Traditionally, population space use estimation techniques scale up from the individual to the population level by aggregating individual animal tracks and then using a single pooled distribution estimator like minimum convex polygons (MCP) or kernel density estimation (KDE). These techniques fail to account for the high levels of temporal autocorrelation in modern tracking datasets, and estimates are often sensitive to the number of individuals sampled. 3. We introduce a new population kernel density estimator (PKDE) that accounts for temporal autocorrelation in tracking data, propagates uncertainty from the individual to the population level, accounts for inter-individual variation when scaling up to the population level, and is not highly sensitive to the number of individuals tracked. Through a combination of simulated data and empirical GPS tracking datasets from three species: (a) grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis); (b) lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris); and (c) bobcat (Lynx rufus), we demonstrate that PKDE produces minimally biased estimates of population-level space use compared to conventional methods like MCP and KDE. 4. The use of conventional estimators can lead to substantial underestimation of population space usage, making them unsuitable for area-based conservation planning. The statistically efficient PKDE estimator provides relatively unbiased estimates of space use with fewer individuals sampled. This method has been made available as a function in the ctmm R package.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".