ANALYSIS OF AERIAL SURVEY DATA ON FLORIDA MANATEE USING MARKOV-CHAIN MONTE-CARLO

We assess population trends of the Atlantic coast population of Florid a manatee, Trichechus manatus latirostris, by reanalyzing aerial surve y data collected between 1982 and 1992. To do so, we develop an explic it biological model that accounts for the method by which the manatees are counted, the mammals' movement between surveys, and the behavior of the population total over time. Bayesian inference, enabled by Mark ov chain Monte Carlo, is used to combine the survey data with the biol ogical model. We compute marginal posterior distributions for all mode l parameters and predictive distributions for future counts. Several c onclusions, such as a decreasing population growth rate and low sighti ng probabilities, are consistent across different prior specifications .