Location: Snedecor 1109 (live stream available at https://iastate.zoom.us/j/91269172339?pwd=M2xMSUJxZkxxWm9FcEdhbTNhODJOdz09)

Presenter: Miranda Tilberg, PhD Candidate in Statistics

Title: Confidence intervals for the utilization distribution overlap index (UDOI)

Abstract: Ecologists routinely study home-range (HR) overlap to learn about the social dynamics and habitat needs of particular animal populations or species. Put simply, an animal's HR is the region where the animal spends 95% of its time. Given two animals' HRs, the utilization distribution overlap index (UDOI) metric can be used to quantify the degree to which the animals share space. We have previously developed chi-square-based confidence intervals (CIs) for the UDOI; however, simulations suggest that the empirical coverage of those CIs depends on the underlying level of true overlap. In this work, we introduce a parametric bootstrap procedure to produce CIs for the UDOI and its component terms. We use simulated data to compare the performance of the new bootstrap-based CIs to the previous chi-square-based CIs. We also employ an example using real tracking data to illustrate the utility of these methods.