A comparison of abundance estimates from extended batch-marking and Jolly-Seber-type experiments

Abstract

Little attention has been paid to the use of multi-sample batch-marking studies, as it is generally assumed that an individual's capture history is necessary for fully efficient estimates. However, recently, Huggins et al. present a pseudo-likelihood for a multi-sample batch-marking study where they used estimating equations to solve for survival and capture probabilities and then derived abundance estimates using a Horvitz-Thompson-type estimator. We have developed and maximized the likelihood for batch-marking studies. We use data simulated from a Jolly-Seber-type study and convert this to what would have been obtained from an extended batch-marking study. We compare our abundance estimates obtained from the Crosbie-Manly-Arnason-Schwarz (CMAS) model with those of the extended batch-marking model to determine the efficiency of collecting and analyzing batch-marking data. We found that estimates of abundance were similar for all three estimators: CMAS, Huggins, and our likelihood. Gains are made when using unique identifiers and employing the CMAS model in terms of precision; however, the likelihood typically had lower mean square error than the pseudo-likelihood method of Huggins et al. When faced with designing a batch-marking study, researchers can be confident in obtaining unbiased abundance estimators. Furthermore, they can design studies in order to reduce mean square error by manipulating capture probabilities and sample size. Boxplots of estimates obtained from an extended batch marking experiment and analogous Jolly-Seber-type study were obtained and compared. We found that batch-marking experiments performed fairly well in comparison to traditional capture-recapture designs in terms of bias and precision of the parameter estimates despite the loss in information. © 2013 The Authors.