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- Title
Predicting mortality in novel environments: tests and sensitivity of a behaviour-based model.
- Authors
Stillman, R. A.; Goss-Custard, J. D.; West, A. D.; Durell, S. E. A. Le V. Dit; Caldow, R. W. G.; McGrorty, S.; Clarke, R. T.
- Abstract
Summary 1. In order to assess the future impact of a proposed development or evaluate the cost effectiveness of proposed mitigating measures, ecologists must be able to provide accurate predictions under new environmental conditions. The difficulty with predicting to new circumstances is that often there is no way of knowing whether the empirical relationships upon which models are based will hold under the new conditions, and so predictions are of uncertain accuracy. 2. We present a model, based on the optimality approach of behavioural ecology, that is designed to overcome this problem. The model's central assumption is that each individual within a population always behaves in order to maximize its fitness. The model follows the optimal decisions of each individual within a population and predicts population mortality rate from the survival consequences of these decisions. Such behaviour-based models should provide a reliable means of predicting to new circumstances because, even if conditions change greatly, the basis of predictions – fitness maximization – will not. 3. The model was parameterized and tested for a shorebird, the oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus . Development aimed to minimize the difference between predicted and observed overwinter starvation rates of juveniles, immatures and adults during the model calibration years of 1976–80. The model was tested by comparing its predicted starvation rates with the observed rates for another sample of years during 1980–91, when the oystercatcher population was larger than in the model calibration years. It predicted the observed density-dependent increase in mortality rate in these years, outside the conditions for which it was parameterized. 4. The predicted overwinter mortality rate was based on generally realistic behaviour of oystercatchers within the model population. The two submodels that predicted the interference-free intake rates and the numbers and densities of...
- Subjects
MORTALITY; EURASIAN oystercatcher; ECOLOGY; MATHEMATICAL models
- Publication
Journal of Applied Ecology, 2000, Vol 37, Issue 4, p564
- ISSN
0021-8901
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1046/j.1365-2664.2000.00506.x