[Babase] Snames not in BIOGRAPH
Catherine Markham
amarkham at princeton.edu
Fri Jul 14 13:05:14 EDT 2006
Hi all,
I'm sending this to the list for archiving. The text below is from
Susan (responding to an email from me) with reference to snames that are
not currently in BIOGRAPH but should not be reused by the field team
when assigning names/snames to new individuals. It includes some useful
info on the source of these non-BIOGRAPH, as well as few specific
comments on particular individuals.
Catherine
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: weather and names
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 14:02:02 +0300
From: Amboseli Baboon Research Project
> The snames list was fairly easy to do as well, but I did want to ask you
> a couple questions about it. I put the attached list together by
> combining the snames that are in BIOGRAPH with the snames that were in
> an old Daphne file labeled "snames not in BIOGRAPH" (note that this file
> only contained snames and names - there was no additional info on birth,
> matgrp, etc.).
Yes, I know about this file. Daphne and Jeanne together created this file
when we did the last update of the snames file in camp, because there are a
number of animals that do not occur in biograph.
I believe these fall into 3 categories: (1) offspring that were born
after we stopped studying a given group. For instance I think there are some
Lodge group babies and some Proton's group babies that got named after we
stopped monitoring the groups and they are not incorporated into babase.
(2) animals that occurred in the very
early days of observation in the late 60's and early 70's (or early 80's for
Lodge group), but for whom we have almost no information -- for instance BAN
who was a putative Lodge group male that occurred there just when we first
started but then disappeared. He is not in babase but we don't want to
re-use the name. I believe that BIG (A Hightail's animal) and Boxer and
Hairpintail are also in
this category. (3) Animals that got named in nonstudy groups but were never
in study groups. DON was an Olkenya female. A number of the others are males
in Stud's or Olkenya's that never immigrated into study groups and that we
only knew for a short time. We don't want these names duplicated but they
are not in babase. Perhaps it would be good if you annotated Daphne's file
with this information if this is not already done.
One note -- Cameroon appears twice in the file you sent, once with sname CAM
and once with sname CS1. Cameroon was an infant that was born after we
stopped observation on Proton's group (or we stopped right
around the time she was born), to Casey I think. I think that in the old
version (foxpro
version) of Biograph this animal did not appear, but this animal has been
incorporated into the new version of biograph. So, she appeared in Daphne's
"snames not in biograph" as CAM but appears in the new biograph with CS1
(indicating that her mother was Casey I believe). You should decide how
Cameroon should appear (CAM or CS1) and then let me know. In the meantime I
will assume that CAM is taken and is not available as an sname.
Another note: The male born Aug 05 into 1.21 with the sname DIP has the full
name Dipstick in our records. In Biograph he just occurs as DIP for the full
name but he is referred to here by the full name Dipstick (mother is
Dunlin).
>
> 1. Check that the sname list at camp does not have any additional
> snames?
There are none (other than babies born since Dec 2005 -- I have just added
those
here to the working snames file that I am printing out). Daphne
compiled the complete list in 2004.
>Jeanne suggested
> that I (or Tabby) send an sname list to the team after every demography
> update. This wouldn't be difficult at all, especially after we sort out
> which snames need to be appended to our BIOGRAPH records.
I think that this is something that is easier to do it when Jeanne or I are
here. It is not something that needs to be done often (every 2 years seems
about enough) and after you send the updated biograph list one must go
through the annotated list here in order to add all the births since the
last biograph update. This seems like an easy place for error to creep in,
and it is perhaps better not to go through this process too often and it is
easy to do when i am here. Also, it doesn't seem to me that this needs
to be
done that
often. I don't have the sense that "mistakes"
come from them not having an updated list, at least not in the past 2 years
since we started the current system that incorporates all the
snames not in Biograph. So unless you feel there is a really compelling
reason (and you are certainly more aware of sname errors than I am), I
suggest that we continue to try this system, where I (or Jeanne) do an
update here every couple of years. It does seem that it will be good to
quickly document on your end how you combined Daphne's file with biograph.
>
> 2. Ask the team about snames TUR and HAD.
TUR is Turuh, born into Viola's in 2004. HAD is Hadley, born into Nyayo's in
2004. Turkana and Hadada were names that were given to non-study animals at
some point, and I believe that TUR and HAD were named before we put together
Daphne's list of snames not in biograph with biograph. So, there were, at
some point at least briefly, animals with the names Turkana and Hadada but
they were either nonstudy group males that we have lost track of or they
were babies or adult females in nonstudy groups.
> Also, I wanted to point out that the sname list includes all the snames
> as of our last demography update (so through December 2005). If you
> like, I'm happy to go through the datasheets and manually add snames for
> new individuals named between January and April of 2006.
Thanks, it was easy to do here with the annotated snames list in the
office.
Susan
--
Catherine Markham
Research Assistant
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Princeton University
Phone: (609) 258-6898
Fax: (609) 258-2712
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