Model Formulation, Fitting and Assessment using State-Space Methods

Authors: Newman, K., Buckland, S.T., Morgan, B., King, R., Borchers, D.L., Cole, D., Besbeas, P., Gimenez, O., Thomas, L.

This book gives a unifying framework for estimating the abundance of open populations: populations subject to births, deaths and movement, given imperfect measurements or samples of the populations. The focus is primarily on populations of vertebrates for which dynamics are typically modelled within the framework of an annual cycle, and for which stochastic variability in the demographic processes is usually modest. Discrete-time models are developed in which animals can be assigned to discrete states such as age class, gender, maturity,  population (within a metapopulation), or species (for multi-species models).

A book written by two members of SE@K has been published this month. The book was co-authored by Rachel McCrea and Byron Morgan.

To put the text into perspective: an important first step in studying the demography of wild animals is to capture them temporarily and tag them in some way so that each specimen is uniquely identifiable. Data collected at that time can be compared with later data if and when the animals are recaptured. Thus researchers can study different forms of capture-recapture data and begin to make good estimates of mortality, population size, and so on.

McCrea and Morgan’s text covers many modern developments of capture-recapture, and related models and methods, and places them into historical context; presenting both classical and Bayesian methods. A range of real data sets motivates and illustrates the material, made available via the companion website www.capturerecapture.co.uk.