[Babase] missing tdates in cycles

Stephanie Combes babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Wed, 05 May 2004 11:21:10 -0400


Hi all -
  Just to get everyone up to speed: While using repstats to add 
reproductive state info to each point sample for the focal female, I 
couldn't add repro info for about 10% of the point samples.  After some 
more digging, it seems that much of the problem is due to missing tdates in 
cycles.
  Now, I've done some checking on the missing tdates.  Here's what it looks 
like to me:  For Alto's group (or branches thereof), I think we might want 
to do some rechecking of cycles in 1988 and 1989. For example, in 1989 we 
are missing 210 different female days (with March being the only month 
where we aren't missing anything). There are other years with missing info 
with 2 likely explanations: (1)sparse data (say in December) and/or (2) 
potential irregularity on the part of the female.  I say this because we 
are missing a lot of info in 1990, but it's mostly due to 4 females who 
matured that year. I'm not so worried about these other years.

Hook's: I'm worried about a bigger chunk of time here.  There are lots of 
missing female days of data from 1988-1993.  In some years, there are days 
each month (for the whole year for the majority of the females in the 
group) missing.  While some months here and there have sparse data, to me, 
it seems like we are missing many more tdates than we should be (need 
Jeanne to check on this).  As an example, Limau in 1990.  We have ddates in 
cycles for almost every month, but no tdates.  There are several months 
where it seems like we could have tdates.  Keep in mind here, though, that 
I haven't checked every case for every year - so there may be cases where 
there's a simple explanation (i.e. nothing in cycles because she was 
pregnant - but then why am I not getting a "P" from repstats? Karl?)

Overall:  Most of the missing tdates seem to be from pre-Babase days.

Next: what to do?  I think we should think about cycles first.  But then, 
we might want to think about repstats.  In terms of Repstats, it can't give 
me reproductive state info because of the missing tdates.  Also, in some 
cases we miss info because repstats works from tdate to tdate. So, there 
are cases where we have full cycle info for a female (tdate to ddate), but 
no subsequent tdate - so we repstats doesn't give us anything.

Let me if know if I need to clarify...
steph