Using Observed Residual Error Structure Yields the Best Estimates of Individual Growth Parameters

Obtaining the best possible estimates of individual growth parameters is essential in studies of physiology, fisheries management, and conservation of natural resources since growth is a key component of population dynamics. In the present work, we use data of an endangered fish species to demonstra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fishes 2021-09, Vol.6 (3), p.35
Main Authors: Curiel-Bernal, Marcelo V., Aragón-Noriega, E. Alberto, Cisneros-Mata, Miguel Á., Sánchez-Velasco, Laura, Jiménez-Rosenberg, S. Patricia A., Parés-Sierra, Alejandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age
Endangered animals
Endangered species
Endemic species
error structure
Expected values
Fish
Fisheries management
Fishery management
Growth models
growth performance
Mathematical functions
multimodel inference
Natural resource management
Natural resources
Parameters
Population
Population dynamics
Rare species
Resource conservation
Species extinction
Threatened species
totoaba
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Summary:Obtaining the best possible estimates of individual growth parameters is essential in studies of physiology, fisheries management, and conservation of natural resources since growth is a key component of population dynamics. In the present work, we use data of an endangered fish species to demonstrate the importance of selecting the right data error structure when fitting growth models in multimodel inference. The totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is a fish species endemic to the Gulf of California increasingly studied in recent times due to a perceived threat of extinction. Previous works estimated individual growth using the von Bertalanffy model assuming a constant variance of length-at-age. Here, we reanalyze the same data under five different variance assumptions to fit the von Bertalanffy and Gompertz models. We found consistent significant differences between the constant and nonconstant error structure scenarios and provide an example of the consequences using the growth performance index ϕ′ to show how using the wrong error structure can produce growth parameter values that can lead to biased conclusions. Based on these results, for totoaba and other related species, we recommend using the observed error structure to obtain the individual growth parameters.
ISSN:2410-3888
2410-3888
DOI:10.3390/fishes6030035