17 Tues Oct 27: Data for stage-structured population dynamics

DUE DATE: Tues Nov 3

Install and load the package popbio.

install.packages("popbio")
require(popbio)

Click on the popbio package in the Package tab, or click here

Today, you will explore some of the data that is available through the popbio package.

17.1 Questions

  1. After reading the documentation about the popbio package, select one of the datasets. Do not select Aquilegia chrysantha as this will be used as the example. For the dataset that you have selected, give the details of the source of the data, ideally, a peer-reviewed publication, or permanent online repository with document. For Aquilegia chrysantha I did an internet search to find a technical report that nicely describes the aq.trans dataset. For my answer to this question I will provide the full citation:

Stubben, Chris J.; Milligan, Brook G. 2001. The demography of a small population of yellow columbines in the Organ Mountains. In: Maschinski, Joyce; Holter, Louella, tech. eds. Southwestern rare and endangered plants: Proceedings of the Third Conference; 2000 September 25-28; Flagstaff, AZ. Proceedings RMRS-P-23. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. p. 70-77.

and the link: https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs/rmrs_p023/rmrs_p023_070_077.pdf

For your dataset you might not be able to find all these details. For your answer please provide 1 sentence describing your search strategy and what you found. [2 marks]

  1. View your dataset. For Aquilegia chrysantha this is completed as:
head(aq.trans)

List the column headings of your dataset and provide their meaning. [2 marks] (for some datasets this is a lot of work, for others it's less work)

  1. Visit the section of the popbio package description describing the grizzly data. Cut and paste the example code into an R script. Run the example code and produce the figures. Hand in the figure with the title 'Grizzly log population growth rates' with a figure caption (see Section 1.7.1 for expectations). Note that \(\log(1)=0\). As an aside, to be consistent with the y-axis, the x-axis would better be labelled as Number of females in year \(t\), \(N_t\). It is fine to leave this error uncorrected. [2 marks]