Population size estimation based upon zero-truncated, one-inflated and sparse count data: Estimating the number of dice snakes in Graz and flare stars in the Pleiades

Abstract

Estimating the size of a hard-to-count population is a challenging matter. In particular, when only few observations of the population to be estimated are available. The matter gets even more complex when one-inflation occurs. This situation is illustrated with the help of two examples: the size of a dice snake population in Graz (Austria) and the number of flare stars in the Pleiades. The paper discusses how one-inflation can be easily handled in likelihood approaches and also discusses how variances and confidence intervals can be obtained by means of a semi-parametric bootstrap. A Bayesian approach is mentioned as well and all approaches result in similar estimates of the hidden size of the population. Finally, a simulation study is provided which shows that the unconditional likelihood approach as well as the Bayesian approach using Jeffreys’ prior perform favorable.