[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