Spatial capture–mark–resight estimation of animal population density

Murray G. Efford and Christine M. Hunter

Biometrics, 2018, vol. 74, issue 2, 411-420

Abstract: Sightings of previously marked animals can extend a capture–recapture dataset without the added cost of capturing new animals for marking. Combined marking and resighting methods are therefore an attractive option in animal population studies, and there exist various likelihood†based non†spatial models, and some spatial versions fitted by Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling. As implemented to date, the focus has been on modeling sightings only, which requires that the spatial distribution of pre†marked animals is known. We develop a suite of likelihood†based spatial mark–resight models that either include the marking phase (“capture–mark–resight†models) or require a known distribution of marked animals (narrow†sense “mark–resight†). The new models sacrifice some information in the covariance structure of the counts of unmarked animals; estimation is by maximizing a pseudolikelihood with a simulation†based adjustment for overdispersion in the sightings of unmarked animals. Simulations suggest that the resulting estimates of population density have low bias and adequate confidence interval coverage under typical sampling conditions. Further work is needed to specify the conditions under which ignoring covariance results in unacceptable loss of precision, or to modify the pseudolikelihood to include that information. The methods are applied to a study of ship rats Rattus rattus using live traps and video cameras in a New Zealand forest, and to previously published data.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/biom.12766

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:biomet:v:74:y:2018:i:2:p:411-420

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0006-341X

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Biometrics from The International Biometric Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().