"unmarkedRanef"Stores the estimated posterior distributions of the latent abundance or occurrence variables.
Objects can be created by calls of the form ranef.
post:An array with nSites rows and Nmax
(K+1) columns and nPrimaryPeriod slices
signature(object = "unmarkedRanef"): Extract the
Best Unbiased Predictors (BUPs) of the latent variables (abundance
or occurrence state). Either the posterior mean or median can be
requested using the stat argument.
signature(object = "unmarkedRanef"): Compute
confidence intervals.
signature(x = "unmarkedRanef", y = "missing"):
Plot the posteriors using xyplot
signature(object = "unmarkedRanef"): Display the
modes and confidence intervals
Empirical Bayes methods can underestimate the variance of the posterior distribution because they do not account for uncertainty in the hyperparameters (lambda or psi). Simulation studies indicate that the posterior mode can exhibit (3-5 percent) negatively bias as a point estimator of site-specific abundance. It appears to be safer to use the posterior mean even though this will not be an integer in general.
Laird, N.M. and T.A. Louis. 1987. Empirical Bayes confidence intervals based on bootstrap samples. Journal of the American Statistical Association 82:739--750.
Carlin, B.P and T.A Louis. 1996. Bayes and Empirical Bayes Methods for Data Analysis. Chapman and Hall/CRC.
Royle, J.A and R.M. Dorazio. 2008. Hierarchical Modeling and Inference in Ecology. Academic Press.
ranef