Smoothing hazard functions for telemetry survival data in wildlife studies

Abstract

Radiotelemetry has become a very popular technique for avian survival studies in recent years. Usually the survival function is estimated. However, the hazard function (the instantaneous rate of change in mortality) is also very important in wildlife ecology. We explain important reasons for estimating the hazard function in wildlife ecology, and show how to estimate the hazard function by applying smoothing techniques (also called non-parametric regression) to telemetry data. We illustrate the smoothing methodology with an example using survival data from a study on wild turkeys in West Virginia. © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.