secr.fit {secr}R Documentation

Spatially Explicit Capture–Recapture

Description

Estimate animal population density with data from an array of passive detectors (traps) by fitting a spatial detection model by maximizing the likelihood. Data must have been assembled as an object of class capthist. Integration is by summation over the grid of points in mask.

Usage

secr.fit (capthist, model = list(D~1, g0~1, sigma~1), 
    mask = NULL, buffer = 100, CL = FALSE, detectfn = 0, 
    start = NULL, link = list(), fixed = list(), 
    timecov = NULL, sessioncov = NULL, groups = NULL, dframe = NULL, 
    details = list(), method = 'Newton-Raphson', verify = TRUE, ...)

Arguments

capthist capthist object including capture data and detector (trap) layout
mask mask object
buffer scalar mask buffer radius if mask not specified
CL logical, if true then the model is fitted by maximizing the conditional likelihood
detectfn integer code for shape of detection function. 0 halfnormal, 1 hazard-rate, 2 exponential
start vector of initial values for beta parameters
link list with optional components 'D', 'g0', 'sigma' and 'z', each a character string in {'log', 'logit', 'identity', 'sin'} for the link function of the relevant real parameter
fixed list with optional components corresponding to each 'real' parameter (e.g., 'D', 'g0', 'sigma'), the scalar value to which parameter is to be fixed
model list with optional components 'D', 'g0', 'sigma' and 'z', each symbolically defining a linear predictor for the relevant real parameter using formula notation
timecov optional dataframe of values of time (occasion-specific) covariate(s).
sessioncov optional dataframe of values of session-specific covariate(s).
groups optional vector of one or more variables with which to form groups. Each element should be the name of a factor variable in the covariates attribute of capthist.
dframe optional data frame of design data for detection parameters
details list of additional settings, mostly model-specific (see Details)
method character string giving method for maximizing log likelihood
verify logical, if true the input data are checked with verify
... other arguments passed to the maximization function

Details

secr.fit fits a SECR model by maximizing the likelihood. The likelihood depends on the detector type ('multi' or 'proximity') of the 'traps' attribute of capthist (Borchers and Efford 2008, Efford, Borchers and Byrom 2009, Efford, Dawson and Borchers 2009). The 'multi' form of the likelihood is also used, with a warning, when detector type = 'single' (see Efford et al. 2009). Default model is null (constant density and detection probability). The set of variables available for use in linear predictors includes some that are constructed automatically (t, b, B), group (g), and others that appear in the covariates of the input data. See secr models for more on defining models.

The length of timecov should equal the number of sampling occasions (ncol(capthist)). Arguments timecov, sessioncov and groups are used only when needed for terms in one of the model specifications. If start is missing then autoini is used for D, g0 and sigma; other beta parameters are set initially to zero. Default link is list(D='log', g0='logit', sigma='log', z='log').

details is used for various specialized settings –

details$distribution specifies the distribution of the number of individuals detected; this may be conditional on the number in the masked area ('binomial') or unconditional ('poisson'). distribution affects only the sampling variance of the estimated density. The default is 'poisson'.

details$hessian is a character string controlling the computation of the Hessian matrix from which variances and covariances are obtained. Options are 'none' (no variances), 'auto' (the default) or 'fdhess' (use the function fdHess in nlme). If 'auto' then the Hessian from the optimisation function is used.

details$LLonly = TRUE causes the function to returns a single evaluation of the log likelihood at the 'start' values.

details$trace = TRUE displays a one-line summary at each evaluation of the likelihood, and other messages.

details$scalesigma = TRUE causes sigma to be scaled by 1/sqrt(D).

details$scaleg0 = TRUE causes g0 to be scaled by sigma^-2. The corresponding 'real' parameters are marked with an asterisk in output (e.g. g0*).

If method = 'Newton-Raphson' then nlm is used to maximize the log likelihood; otherwise optim is used with the chosen method ('BFGS','Nelder-Mead', etc.). A feature of nlm is that it takes a large step early on in the maximization that may cause floating point underflow or overflow in one or more real parameters. This can be controlled by passing the 'stepmax' argument of nlm in the ... argument of secr.fit (see first example).

If verify = TRUE then verify is called to check capthist and mask; analysis is aborted if errors are found.

Value

The function secr.fit returns an object of class secr. This has components

call function call
capthist saved input
mask saved input
detectfn saved input
CL saved input
timecov saved input
sessioncov saved input
groups saved input
dframe saved input
design reduced design matrices, parameter table and parameter index array for actual animals (see secr.design.MS)
design0 reduced design matrices, parameter table and parameter index array for 'naive' animal (see secr.design.MS)
start vector of starting values for beta parameters
link list with components for each real parameter (e.g., 'D', 'g0'), the name of the link function used for each real parameter. Component 'z' is NULL unless detectfn = 1 (hazard-rate).
fixed saved input
parindx list with possible components 'D', 'g0', 'sigma' and 'z', for the indices of the 'beta' parameters associated with each real parameter ('z' NULL unless detectfn = 1).
model saved input
details saved input
vars vector of unique variable names in model
betanames names of beta parameters
realnames names of fitted (real) parameters
fit list describing the fit (output from nlm or optim)
beta.vcv variance-covariance matrix of beta parameters
D array of predicted densities of each group at each mask point in each session, dim(D) = c(nrow(mask), ngroups, nsessions)
version secr version number
starttime character string of date and time at start of fit
proctime processor time for model fit, in seconds

Note

print, AIC, vcov, and predict methods are provided. derived is used to compute the derived parameters 'esa' (effective sampling area) and 'D' (density) for models fitted by maximizing the conditional likelihood (CL = TRUE).

Components 'version' and 'starttime' were introduced in version 1.2.7, and recording of the completion time in 'fitted' was discontinued.

Author(s)

Murray Efford murray.efford@otago.ac.nz

References

Borchers, D. L. and Efford, M. G. (2008) Spatially explicit maximum likelihood methods for capture–recapture studies. Biometrics 64, 377–385.

Efford, M. G. (2004) Density estimation in live-trapping studies. Oikos 106, 598–610.

Efford, M. G., Borchers D. L. and Byrom, A. E. (2009) Density estimation by spatially explicit capture–recapture: likelihood-based methods. In: D. L. Thompson, E. G. Cooch and M. J. Conroy (eds) Modeling Demographic Processes in Marked Populations. Springer. Pp. 255–269.

Efford, M. G., Dawson, D. K. and Borchers, D. L. (2009) Population density estimated from locations of individuals on a passive detector array. Ecology 90, 2676–2682.

See Also

capthist, mask, detection functions, print.secr, vcov.secr, AIC.secr, derived, predict.secr, verify

Examples


## construct test data (array of 48 'multi-catch' traps)

detectors <- make.grid (nx = 6, ny = 8, detector = 'multi')  
detections <- sim.capthist (detectors, popn = list(D = 10, 
    buffer = 100), detectpar = list(g0 = 0.2, sigma = 25))

## fit & print null (constant parameter) model
## stepmax is passed to nlm (not needed)

secr0 <- secr.fit (detections, stepmax = 50) 
secr0   ## uses print method for secr

## compare fit of null model with learned-response model for g0

secrb <- secr.fit (detections, model = g0~b)
AIC (secr0, secrb)

## typical result

##                  model   detectfn npar    logLik     AIC    AICc dAICc  AICwt
## secr0 D~1 g0~1 sigma~1 halfnormal    3 -347.1210 700.242 700.928 0.000 0.7733
## secrb D~1 g0~b sigma~1 halfnormal    4 -347.1026 702.205 703.382 2.454 0.2267


[Package secr version 1.2.11 Index]