New biograph maturity date columns Was: Re: [Babase] CADET

Susan Alberts babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Thu, 7 Oct 2004 20:06:01 +0300


>When would 'ranked by' be a different date from 'rankdate'
>or 'mature date' be a different date from 'matdate'?


When a male is born into a study group and we know the date he was 
ranked or reached maturity, then they would not be. In fact, perhaps 
for these males, they do not get assigned any "ranked by or "matured 
by" dates, as we don't need them.

If a male is not born into a study group then he will never have a 
rankdate or a matdate. He would only have a ranked by and matured by. 
These would in no way have any relationship to the maturational 
events themselves, only to his STATE as a mature individual.

>
>Maybe my problem here is that I don't see the males and females
>as being different populations?


It is not that the two sexes are different, it is that there are two 
very different classes of males, about whom we can ask and answer 
different types of questions.

One class of males (those born into study groups) is essentially like 
the females in the population in terms of maturational information 
(except that we usually have less of it because sometimes they 
disperse before they mature). The other class of males is totally 
different. We never know anything about their maturational events. We 
just know that they are adults.

Currently there is no way in the database to identify all adult 
males. We could do this by assigning false matdates and rankdates to 
every male the immigrates. However, these dates would be so different 
from the real mature dates etc that they would be a totally different 
type of data. They would not be anything even in the realm of 
estimates. They would have a totally different meaning.


>(From the current docs)
>
>RANKDATES.Ranked
>The date the individual first attained a rank among adults.


For most males in the population we never have anything even close to 
this, we can't estimate it, we have absolutely no idea. however, we 
know that they have attained it at some point in the past because 
they come into the group as fully mature males.

This is the marker of adulthood for males. If they have attained it 
they are adult, otherwise not. For some males we know WHEN it 
happened. For most males we have no idea WHEN it happened we only 
know THAT it happened. I am sort of uncomfortable mixing these two 
totally different types of information even seem remotely equivalent 
by putting them in the same field, but working towards the idea as 
best I can.

>
>MATUREDATES.Matured
>The date the individual reached sexual maturity.  This is the
>date of "menarche" for females and the date of testicular enlargement
>for males.  All sexually mature individuals should have a value.
>(The current doc says all sexually mature individuals should have
>a non-blank value, but since we moved it from BIOGRAPH if it
>does not have a value it does not exist.)


same as for rank date above.

>
>MATUREDATES.Mstatus
>Sexual maturity status.  This field records the quality of the
>sexual maturity date.  (Current docs says "When this field is empty the sexual
>maturity date is from recorded observation." but that is no longer right,
>there must be a value.) Summary: Meaning of "E" value, MSTATS support table.
>
>(New)
>
>RANKDATES.Ranked
>(new stuff) For immigrent males the rankdate is the date we guess they
>reached some rank wherevere they came from.  Or  ... the date they
>were first ranked in a study group.


Right, as noted above we don't want to guess, we would usually not 
have meaningful estimates, and the date they were first ranked in a 
study group is not really anything like an estimate of rank date.

>
>RANKDATES.Rstatus
>Whether the rankdate was obtained by direct observation or guess.
>Or....
>Whether we know the rankdate is the earliest date the individual
>actually obtained rank (because we observed it) or whether the
>individual (probably) obtained rank elsewhere andthe rankdate
>is merely the first observed rankdate.
>
>(The alternate scheme)
>
>RANKEDBY.Ranked
>RANKDATES.Ranked when the individual was born into our study group,
>or the earliest observed rank date for immigrents.
>
>
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Susan Alberts, Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, 
Durham NC 27708
919-660-7272 (phone), 919-660-7293 (FAX)