| Institution: | 1.Department of Statistics,University of Kentucky,Lexington,USA;2.Department of Entomology,University of Kentucky,Lexington,USA;3.Department of Mathematics and Statistics,California State University, Chico,Chico,USA;4.Department of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences and Department of Biology,University of Western Ontario,London,Canada;5.Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, University of Georgia,Athens,USA |
| Abstract: | The literature on modelling a predator’s prey selection describes many intuitive indices, few of which have both reasonable statistical justification and tractable asymptotic properties. Here, we provide a simple model that meets both of these criteria, while extending previous work to include an array of data from multiple species and time points. Further, we apply the expectation–maximisation algorithm to compute estimates if exact counts of the number of prey species eaten in a particular time period are not observed. We conduct a simulation study to demonstrate the accuracy of our method, and illustrate the utility of the approach for field analysis of predation using a real data set, collected on wolf spiders using molecular gut-content analysis. |
