Criticisms Biologically Unwarranted and Analytically Irrelevant: Reply to Rominger et al.

Abstract

ABSTRACT The criticisms of Rominger et al. (2008) of our retrospective analysis of desert bighorn sheep (DBS; Ovis canadensis mexicana) dynamics in the San Andres Mountains of south‐central New Mexico, USA, contained many biological errors and analytical oversights. Herein, we show that Rominger et al. (2008) 1) overstated both magnitude and potential effect of predator removal; 2) incorrectly claimed that our total precipitation (TP) model did not fit the data when TP correctly classed ≥66% of subsequent population increases and declines (P ≥0.063); 3) presented a necessary prerequisite of the exponential model (serial correlation between Nt and Nt+1) as the key relationship in the DBS data, when it merely reflected that DBS are strongly K‐selected and was irrelevant to our hypothesis tests specific to factors affecting the instantaneous rate of population increase (r); 4) greatly oversimplified relationships among precipitation, arid environments, and DBS; and 5) advocated a time for collection of lamb/female (L/F) ratio data that was unrelated to any meaningful period in the biological year of DBS and consequently presented L/F ratio data unrelated to observed dynamics of DBS. In contrast, the L/F ratios used in Bender and Weisenberger (2005) correctly predicted annual changes and were correlated with long‐term population rates of change.