Raptor Health V4: Software to assess the population-scale impact of mortality in raptors
The Raptor Health V4 software allows wildlife professionals to use a mathematical model and 17-sequential years of nesting or breeding adult count data to examine the localized population-scale impacts to raptor populations arising from one or more source of observed mortality. The mathematical model is the closed-system Lefkovitch matrix, where closed-system is defined to be no gains or losses to the population from dispersal. The software allows the user to input demographic parameters as well as time series data (counts of nesting pairs and counts of mortalities) to produce comparative demographic quantities between a population with and without the source of mortality, including the annual and bi-annual abundances of hatchlings, non-breeders, and breeders, growth rates (long-term, transient, cumulative, and stochastic), stable stage distributions, reproductive values, and dominant elasticities. The software automatically generates non-parametric (Kruskal-Wallis) statistical tests to compare differences in median growth rates between populations with and without the source of mortality, as well as quantifies the bias introduced through the use of the algorithm as an estimator. Default values in the software depict parameters of bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and eagle nesting and mortality data collected by biologists at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC).
Version History
| Version | Date | Summary |
|---|---|---|
4* | 2023-08-18 21:47:58 | Edits during review of paper. See readme for full list of changes. |
| 2023-08-18 19:38:51 | Edits during review of paper. | |
| 2023-05-09 08:43:34 | Modified original software after reviewer feedback. See readme document for full list of changes. | |
| 2020-07-24 12:09:14 |