Site-selection bias can drive apparent population declines in long-term studies
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Conservation Biology, Ecology, Natural Resource Management, Population Biology
- Keywords
- Population Decline, Conservation, Abundance, Population Dynamics, Site Selection
- Copyright
- © 2019 Fournier et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2019. Site-selection bias can drive apparent population declines in long-term studies. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27507v3 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27507v3
Abstract
Detecting population declines is a critical task for conservation biology. The spatiotemporal variability of populations, along with logistical difficulties in population estimation, makes this task difficult. Here we call attention to a possible bias in estimates of population decline: when study sites are chosen based on abundance of the focal species, for statistical reasons apparent declines are likely even without an underlying population trend. This “site-selection bias” has been mentioned in the literature but is not well known. We show using simulated and real population data that when site-selection biases are introduced, they have substantial impact on inferences about population trends. We use a left-censoring method to show patterns consistent with the operation of the site-selection bias in real population studies. The site-selection bias is, thus, an important consideration for conservation biologists, and we offer suggestions for minimizing or mitigating it in study design and analysis.
Author Comment
This version fixed an issue with the Figures.