Bayesian estimation in the class of bisexual branching processes with population-size dependent mating

Abstract

This paper deals with the class of bisexual branching processes with population-size dependent mating introduced in Molina et al. (2002, Bisexual Galton–Watson branching process with population-size dependent mating. J Appl Probab 39:479–490). We determine Bayes estimators for the main moments of such processes in both situations: assuming offspring distribution belonging to the bivariate power series family and considering that no assumption is made about the underlying offspring distribution. As illustration we provide several examples, in particular, considering some classical offspring distributions, we explicitly determine the proposed Bayes estimators and, through simulation, we show the evolution of their estimates and of the corresponding high posterior density credibility sets.