Improving Our Understanding of Seabird Behaviour at Sea

7.1 Appendix AA: Sample sizes for utilisation distributions under day/night and high/low wind conditions

As noted in the methods, we used a classification of sample sizes of to highlight degrees of confidence that can be placed on interpretations of the data, such as overlap analysis of distributions. Sample sizes are presented on all utilisation maps for each species, however, these are also summarised here:

(1) Lowest (red filled cells): Less than 100 fixes or five or fewer birds provided data per state and category split of the data (i.e. day-low, day-high, night-low, night-high).

(2) Low-medium (orange): 101 – 250 or 6 – 10 birds.

(3) Medium (yellow): 251 – 1000 fixes or 11 – 15 birds.

(4) Medium-high (light green): 1001 – 2500 fixes or 16 – 20 birds.

(5) Highest (green): More than 2500 fixes or 25 + birds.

Further, we also highlight where the proportion of available data falls below 5% (cells with asterisk) of the total available for the state identified in the HMM for the specific category split of the data. This additional assessment provided a further quantification useful for showing where perhaps sufficient sample sizes existed under the above confidence levels, but that would otherwise mask disparity in proportionality of data among each category.