[Babase] Fwd: Group 99 Summary - without attachment
Susan Alberts
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Thu, 5 May 2005 00:08:32 -0400
Hi all,
I've forwarded Catherine's email without attachment to the mailing
list and have provided replies below. I've retained all of
Catherine's email so we have a trace of it on the mailing list and
hopefully this doesn't violate netiquette.
Catherine, thanks for doing this, it is a great help in figuring things out.
>Hi Jeanne, Susan, and Leah,
>
>After playing some more with the database and field records, I agree
>we most likely do have a mixed bag in Group 99 of both days when the
>male was alone (Group 10) and "unknown" (Group 9).
>
>When I looked more closely at the Members table, I noticed that many
>of the records placing a given male in Group 99 are consecutive. To
>summarize these "bouts" of consecutive days, I made a spreadsheet
>(attached) listing the male's sname, first date in Group 99, last
>date in Group 99, and total number of days in Group 99. Each bout
>has its own row, so a male's sname may show up more than once. The
>range in bout length is 1 day all the way up to 17 years!
Yes, clearly sometimes 99 means unknown and sometimes it means alone.
This is unfortunate. The 17 year bout is for Ibis, it covers the
first 17 years of his life (estimated) before he immigrated into a
study group and was named. Clearly in this case 99 = unknown. In
other cases it is clearly alone.
>
>Another example of what things look like in detail is the case below
>with Alex. Here, I've referenced the monitoring notebooks to see
>what field notes we have around the time period that Alex is placed
>in Group 99 in BaBase:
>
>All of the dates for Alex in Group 99 are consecutive from 7 March
>1996 through 17 March 1996. The origin of all of these records is
>"M" (in other words, they were all entered manually). Just
>immediately prior to Alex being listed with group 99, he was being
>censused in Linda's group; right after his eleven days in group 99,
>he shows up in Weaver's group.
>
>Demography notes during this time period in Linda's monitoring
>notebook record:
>
>7 March 1996 - "Alex seen near Weaver's at 1110. He was not with
>Linda's today."
>
>12 March 1996 - "0714 Alex still missing from Linda's group."
>
>13 March 1996 - "0704 Alex still missing from the group."
>
>18 March 1996 - "0719 Alex who have been missing in this group in
>Weaver's group."
>
>There is only one demography notes for Alex around this time in
>Weaver's monitoring notebook:
>
>18 March 1996 - "0719 Alex is in Weaver's group today. He has been
>in Linda's group but he went missing for several days."
>
>My guess is nearly all the days Alex is now listed in Group 99
>should be changed to Group 9. The one exception may be 7 March 1996
>when it sounds like he was in Group 10.
yes although interpolation might put him in alone for longer than that.
>
>Hope that helps somewhat - maybe this is something Leah, Jeanne, and
>I can continue to work after Susan leaves for Kenya.
When you come to Duke Fri we will give you a copy of my old male
movement database. This has all known episodes of males spending time
alone up through some time in the early 1990's. There should be no
cases of males spending time alone in that period that are not in my
database. This should allow you to quickly sort between the 99's that
are alone and the 99's that are unknown, for that period. You might
also find that the "origin" code in Members and "Status" in Census is
helpful here, as they show where the data came from (a lot is from
my files and this might reveal patterns too).
Susan
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Alberts, Associate Professor
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708
phone 919-660-7272 fax 919-660-7293