[Babase] male disperse dates
Leah Gerber
lgerber at duke.edu
Thu Mar 16 13:59:44 EST 2006
Hello,
There are a couple of types of conversion errors that come up with the
matured, ranked and disperse dates for males. There are only 7 errors in
total but I think we should make the rules very clear.
*1*. Error if there is a disperse date but no matured date
There are 3 individuals who have a disperse date but no matured date.
Susan's documentation for "on" and "by" dates states:
1. *The male is a natal male from one of our study groups but he
disperses before attaining one or both markers, and attains one or
both markers in a non-study group.* We follow these rules:
1. If he emigrates before testicular enlargement and is known
to be living in a non-study group and we have no other
information about him, we assign him a matured “BY” date
that is is 6 years 8 months afer his birth. Again, the point
here is to allow us to (somewhat coarsely) designate the
subadults in the population at any given time. This also
provides a “BY” date if comes back into a study group after
he has attained the marker.
Is this a rule that has been followed in the past? If so, then we should
estimate matured dates for PES, HIC, and SEB using this method. All 3
are natal males.
*2*. Error if there is a ranked date but no matured date
There are 4 individuals with a ranked by date but no matured date. All
of these are recent ranked "by" dates. Susan's documentation states that:
1. If the male enters as an adult (field notes indicate adult)
OR he immediately starts winning fights with other adult
males, he gets a “BY” date for RANKED but /not/ for MATURED
– he gets no entry at all in the MATUREDATES table.
I think, at least recently, we were giving individuals a matured by date
that was the same as the ranked by date. However, Karl's documentation
states that there must be a matured date if there is a ranked date.
Which rule do we want?
Thanks,
Leah
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