Graphical diagnostics for occupancy models with imperfect detection

Abstract

Occupancy-detection models that account for imperfect detection have become widely used in many areas of ecology. As with any modelling exercise, it is important to assess whether the fitted model encapsulates the main sources of variation in the data, yet there have been few methods developed for occupancy-detection models that would allow practitioners to do so. In this paper, a new type of residual for occupancy-detection models is developed according to the method of Dunn & Smyth (Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 5, 1996, 236–244). Residuals are separately constructed to diagnose the occupancy and detection components of the model. Because the residuals are quite noisy,..