Abstract
THE number of animals in a population can be estimated from the proportion of individuals in a sample which have been captured previously1–3. Animals which have been captured previously may be recognised by some method of marking. If the population is very large relative to the size of the samples, no marked individuals might be recaptured, because the probability of capturing any of the few marked animals is very small. Marked animals may, however, fail to be recaptured even if the population is quite small, because of random sampling error. It has not been realised before that a useful estimate of population size can be made even when no animals have been recaptured.
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References
Lincoln, F. C., U.S. Department of Agriculture Circ., 118, 1–4 (1930).
Fisher, R. A., and Ford, E. B., Heredity, 1, 143–174 (1947).
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BELL, G. Population estimates from recapture studies in which no recaptures have been made. Nature 248, 616 (1974). https://doi.org/10.1038/248616a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/248616a0
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