Kodikara Saritha, Demirhan Haydar, Stone Lewi
Mathematics, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
Mathematics, School of Science, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
J Theor Biol. 2018 Apr 7;442:98-109. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2018.01.015.
The sighting record of threatened species is often used to infer the possibility of extinction. Most of these sightings have uncertain validity. Solow and Beet(2014) developed two models using a Bayesian approach which allowed for uncertainty in the sighting record by formally incorporating both certain and uncertain sightings, but in different ways. Interestingly, the two methods give completely different conclusions concerning the extinction of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. We further examined these two methods to provide a mathematical explanation, and to explore in more depth, as to why the results differed from one another. It was found that the first model was more sensitive to the last uncertain sighting, while the second was more sensitive to the last certain sighting. The difficulties in choosing the appropriate model are discussed.
濒危物种的目击记录常被用于推断灭绝的可能性。这些目击记录大多有效性存疑。索洛和比特（2014年）采用贝叶斯方法开发了两个模型，通过正式纳入确定和不确定的目击情况，但方式不同，从而考虑到目击记录中的不确定性。有趣的是，这两种方法在象牙喙啄木鸟的灭绝问题上得出了完全不同的结论。我们进一步研究了这两种方法，以给出数学解释，并更深入地探究结果为何彼此不同。结果发现，第一个模型对最后一次不确定的目击更为敏感，而第二个模型对最后一次确定的目击更为敏感。文中还讨论了选择合适模型的困难。
