Combining the existing knowledge on links between functional characteristics of phytoplankton taxa and food web functioning with the methods from long-term data analysis, we present an approach for using phytoplankton monitoring data to draw conclusions on potential effects of phytoplankton taxonomic composition on the next trophic level. This information can be used as a part of marine food we...

Bayesian network classifiers (BNC) have received considerable attention in machine learning field. Some special structure BNCs have been proposed and demonstrate promise performance. However, recent researches show that structure learning in BNs may lead to a non-negligible posterior problem, i.e, there might be many structures have similar posterior scores. In this paper, we propose a generali...

The sensitivity of multiple imputation methods to deviations from their distributional assumptions is investigated using simulations, where the parameters of scientific interest are the coefficients of a linear regression model, and values in predictor variables are missing at random. The performance of a newly proposed imputation method based on generalized additive models for location, scale ...

Timing and amount of solar radiation were examined as factors influencing the distribution of seven perennial plants on a small mountain located in the Chihuahuan Desert. Average direct beam solar radiation fluxes at differing times throughout the day and year were estimated with computer calculations. Principal components analysis was used to reduce the number of solar radiation parameters and...

1 2 Understanding the habitat requirements of a species for breeding is essential for its 3 conservation, particularly if the availability of suitable habitat is a limiting factor for 4 population growth. This is postulated to be the case for grey seals, one of the more 5 abundant marine apex predators in northern European waters. In common with similar 6 studies that have investigated the habi...

To stimulate the discussion about possible reasons for whale strandings, we suggest solar driven geomagnetic variations as one further explanation for this phenomenon. Following this hypothesis that whales may strand due to geomagnetic disturbances we compared annual means of stranding event numbers of sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) along the North Sea coasts with yearly averaged numbers...