McClintock Brett T, White Gary C
Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA.
Ecology. 2009 Feb;90(2):313-20. doi: 10.1890/08-0973.1.
The robust design has become popular among animal ecologists as a means for estimating population abundance and related demographic parameters with mark-recapture data. However, two drawbacks of traditional mark-recapture are financial cost and repeated disturbance to animals. Mark-resight methodology may in many circumstances be a less expensive and less invasive alternative to mark-recapture, but the models developed to date for these data have overwhelmingly concentrated only on the estimation of abundance. Here we introduce a mark-resight model analogous to that used in mark-recapture for the simultaneous estimation of abundance, apparent survival, and transition probabilities between observable and unobservable states. The model may be implemented using standard statistical computing software, but it has also been incorporated into the freeware package Program MARK. We illustrate the use of our model with mainland New Zealand Robin (Petroica australis) data collected to ascertain whether this methodology may be a reliable alternative for monitoring endangered populations of a closely related species inhabiting the Chatham Islands. We found this method to be a viable alternative to traditional mark-recapture when cost or disturbance to species is of particular concern in long-term population monitoring programs.
稳健设计在动物生态学家中已变得流行起来，成为一种利用标记重捕数据估计种群数量及相关种群统计学参数的方法。然而，传统标记重捕法有两个缺点，即财务成本和对动物的反复干扰。在许多情况下，标记再观察方法可能是一种比标记重捕成本更低且侵入性更小的替代方法，但迄今为止针对这些数据开发的模型绝大多数仅专注于数量估计。在此，我们引入一种类似于标记重捕中使用的标记再观察模型，用于同时估计数量、表观存活率以及可观察状态与不可观察状态之间的转移概率。该模型可以使用标准统计计算软件来实现，但它也已被纳入免费软件包Program MARK中。我们用收集到的新西兰大陆知更鸟（Petroica australis）数据来说明我们模型的使用情况，以确定这种方法是否可能是监测栖息在查塔姆群岛的一个近缘濒危物种种群的可靠替代方法。我们发现，在长期种群监测计划中，当成本或对物种的干扰特别令人担忧时，这种方法是传统标记重捕法的一种可行替代方法。
