Search results for "Metrics"
showing 10 items of 5055 documents
The irreducible uncertainty of the demography–environment interaction in ecology
2002
The interpretation of ecological data has been greatly improved by bridging the gap between ecological and statistical models. The major challenge is to separate competing hypotheses concerning demography, or other ecological relationships, and environmental variability (noise). In this paper we demonstrate that this may be an arduous, if not impossible, task. It is the lack of adequate ecological theory, rather than statistical sophistication, which leads to this problem. A reconstruction of underlying ecological processes can only be done if we are certain of either the demographic or the noise model, which is something that can only be achieved by an improved theory of stochastic ecologi…
Optimal contract length for biodiversity conservation under conservation budget constraint
2014
We examine the optimal length of a contract period in a conservation program with payments for ecosystem services aiming at protecting biodiversity on privately owned forests. The government chooses the number of stands and the length of contracts so as to maximize biodiversity benefits under a binding conservation budget. We examine the implication of two alternative budgets: a separate budget for each period (periodic budget) or one budget that to be used in all periods (intertemporal budget). The impact of the budget type shows up in the fact that with intertemporal budget choice set is larger and more high quality stands are available for contracting. Based on theoretical characterizati…
Territoriality versus flocking in the Zenaida dove (Zenaida aurita): resource polymorphism revisited using morphological and genetic analyses.
2011
11 pages; International audience; The term “resource polymorphism” refers to the existence of alternative phenotypes in relation to resource use, as a result of disruptive selection. Evidence for resource polymorphism is widespread in fish but remains scarce in birds. Although Zenaida Doves (Zenaida aurita) usually defend year-round territories, doves on Barbados can also be observed foraging at seed-storage sites in large flocks with little, if any, inter-individual aggression. On the basis of morphological variation, it has been suggested (Sol et al. 2005) that this represents a case of resource polymorphism, primarily driven by competition for territories. Using new data, we revisited th…
Parasitoids flip a coin before deciding to superparasitize
2004
Summary 1. Host acceptance decision in parasitic wasps depends strongly on the parasitism status of the encountered host. In solitary species, a host allows the development of only a single parasitic larva, and then any oviposition in an already parasitized host leads to larval competition and to potential loss of offspring. The ability of parasitoids to discriminate between parasitized and healthy hosts is well documented. Despite this, parasitized hosts are still accepted by the foraging wasps, an occurrence termed superparasitism. 2. In the last decades, theoretical studies have suggested that under certain circumstances superparasitism can be optimal. Generally, the superparasitism theo…
Statistical modelling and RCS detrending methods provide similar estimates of long-term trend in radial growth of common beech in north-eastern France
2011
International audience; Dendrochronological methods have greatly contributed to the documentation of past long-term trends in forest growth. These methods primarily focus on the high-frequency signals of tree ring chronologies. They require the removal of the ageing trend in tree growth, known as 'standardisation' or 'detrending', as a prerequisite to the estimation of such trends. Because the approach is sequential, it may however absorb part of the low-frequency historical signal. In this study, we investigate the effect of a sequential and a simultaneous estimation of the ageing trend on the chronology of growth. We formerly developed a method to estimate historical changes in growth, in…
Relationships among Abies nebrodensis, A. alba and A. cephalonica in the morphological and anatomical needle characteristics
2017
AbstractWe used 39 morphological and anatomical needle traits in the biometric comparisons Abies nebrodensis with A. alba and A. cephalonica. The multivariate analyses were utilised and a closer relationship of A. nebrodensis to A. cephalonica than to A. alba was detected, in contrast to what has been shown for cone characteristics.
Extending Joint Models in Community Ecology : A Response to Beissinger et al.
2016
The joint modelling of many variables in community ecology is a new and technically challenging area with many opportunities for future developments. The possibility of extending joint models to deal with imperfect detection has been highlighted by Beissinger et al. as an important problem worthy of further investigation [1]. We agree, and previously pointed to this potential extension as an outstanding question [2], alongside models that can estimate phylogenetic repulsion or attraction, nonlinearity in the response to latent variables, and spatial or temporal correlation, because further developments in all these directions are needed.
Uncovering the knowledge flows and intellectual structures of research in Technological Forecasting and Social Change: A journey through history
2020
Abstract Technological Forecasting and Social Change (TF&SC) celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year. The anniversary represents an appropriate time for an introspective analysis of the journal's history and impact. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of TF&SC in terms of how often TF&SC is cited by other journals (citation outflow), how often other journals are cited by TF&SC (citation inflow), citations by Web of Science and SCImago disciplinary categories, most-cited articles in TF&SC, co-citation of journals, and co-occurrence of author keywords. Analysis is conducted by using the Web of Science (WOS) database and Visualization of Similarities (VOS) viewer software. The in…
Improving stock index forecasts by using a new weighted fuzzy-trend time series method
2017
Define a new technical indicator for measuring the trend of the fuzzy time series.Introduce a new weighted fuzzy-trend time series method to forecast stock indices.Compare ex-post performances of weighted FTS methods using stock market indices.Assess statistical significance of ex-post forecast accuracy for weighted FTS methods. We propose using new weighted operators in fuzzy time series to forecast the future performance of stock market indices. Based on the chronological sequence of weights associated with the original fuzzy logical relationships, we define both chronological-order and trend-order weights, and incorporate our proposals for the ex-post forecast into the classical modeling…
Conditional Versus Joint Probability Assessments
1984
AbstractThe assessment of conditional and / or joint probabilities of events that constitute scenarios is necessary for sound planning, forecasting, and decision making. The assessment process is complex and subtle, and various difficulties are encountered in the elicitation of such probabilities such as, implicit violations ofthe probability calculus and some meaningfjilness conditions. The necessary and sufficient as well as meaningfulness conditions that the elicited information on conditional and joint probabilities must satisfy are evaluated against actual assessments empirically. A high frequency of violation of these conditions was observed in assessing both conditional and joint pro…