Applications
Consider two observers who separately count the different species of plants or animals in a given area. If they each come back having found 100 species but only 5 particular species are found by both observers, then each observer clearly missed at least 95 species (that is, the 95 that only the other observer found). Thus, we know that both observers miss a lot. On the other hand, if 99 of the 100 species each observer found had been found by both, it is fair to expect that they have found a far higher percentage of the total species that are there to find.
The same reasoning applies to mark and recapture. If some animals in a given area are caught and marked, and later a second round of captures is done: the number of marked animals found in the second round can be used to generate an estimate of the total population. [2]
Another example arises in computational linguistics for estimating the total vocabulary of a language. Given two independent samples, the overlap between their vocabularies enables a useful estimate of how many more vocabulary items exist but did not happen to show up in either sample. A similar example involves estimating the number of typographical errors remaining in a text, from two proofreaders' counts.
The Lincoln Index formalizes this phenomenon. If E1 and E2 are the number of species (or words, or other phenomena) observed by two independent methods, and S is the number of observations in common, then the Lincoln Index is simply
For values of S < 10, this estimate is rough, and becomes extremely rough for values of S < 5. In the case where S = 0 (that is, there is no overlap at all) the Lincoln Index is formally undefined. This can arise if the observers only find a small percentage of the actual species (perhaps by not looking hard enough or long enough), if the observers are using methods that are not statistically independent (for example if one looks only for large creatures and the other only for small), or in other circumstances.
Statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
A transect is a path along which one counts and records occurrences of the objects of study.
Species diversity is the number of different species that are represented in a given community. The effective number of species refers to the number of equally abundant species needed to obtain the same mean proportional species abundance as that observed in the dataset of interest. Meanings of species diversity may include species richness, taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity, and/or species evenness. Species richness is a simple count of species. Taxonomic or phylogenetic diversity is the genetic relationship between different groups of species. Species evenness quantifies how equal the abundances of the species are.
A haplotype is a group of alleles in an organism that are inherited together from a single parent.
Mist nets are nets used to capture wild birds and bats. They are used by hunters and poachers to catch and kill animals, but also by ornithologists and chiropterologists for banding and other research projects. Mist nets are typically made of nylon or polyester mesh suspended between two poles, resembling a volleyball net. When properly deployed in the correct habitat, the nets are virtually invisible. Mist nets have shelves created by horizontally strung lines that create a loose, baggy pocket. When a bird or bat hits the net, it falls into this pocket, where it becomes tangled.
Mark and recapture is a method commonly used in ecology to estimate an animal population's size where it is impractical to count every individual. A portion of the population is captured, marked, and released. Later, another portion will be captured and the number of marked individuals within the sample is counted. Since the number of marked individuals within the second sample should be proportional to the number of marked individuals in the whole population, an estimate of the total population size can be obtained by dividing the number of marked individuals by the proportion of marked individuals in the second sample. The method assumes, rightly or wrongly, that the probability of capture is the same for all individuals. Other names for this method, or closely related methods, include capture-recapture, capture-mark-recapture, mark-recapture, sight-resight, mark-release-recapture, multiple systems estimation, band recovery, the Petersen method, and the Lincoln method.
Wildlife conservation refers to the practice of protecting wild species and their habitats in order to maintain healthy wildlife species or populations and to restore, protect or enhance natural ecosystems. Major threats to wildlife include habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation, overexploitation, poaching, pollution, climate change, and the illegal wildlife trade. The IUCN estimates that 42,100 species of the ones assessed are at risk for extinction. Expanding to all existing species, a 2019 UN report on biodiversity put this estimate even higher at a million species. It is also being acknowledged that an increasing number of ecosystems on Earth containing endangered species are disappearing. To address these issues, there have been both national and international governmental efforts to preserve Earth's wildlife. Prominent conservation agreements include the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). There are also numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) dedicated to conservation such as the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International.
Sample size determination or estimation is the act of choosing the number of observations or replicates to include in a statistical sample. The sample size is an important feature of any empirical study in which the goal is to make inferences about a population from a sample. In practice, the sample size used in a study is usually determined based on the cost, time, or convenience of collecting the data, and the need for it to offer sufficient statistical power. In complex studies, different sample sizes may be allocated, such as in stratified surveys or experimental designs with multiple treatment groups. In a census, data is sought for an entire population, hence the intended sample size is equal to the population. In experimental design, where a study may be divided into different treatment groups, there may be different sample sizes for each group.
In ecology, the species discovery curve is a graph recording the cumulative number of species of living things recorded in a particular environment as a function of the cumulative effort expended searching for them. It is related to, but not identical with, the species-area curve.
Spatial ecology studies the ultimate distributional or spatial unit occupied by a species. In a particular habitat shared by several species, each of the species is usually confined to its own microhabitat or spatial niche because two species in the same general territory cannot usually occupy the same ecological niche for any significant length of time.
Stygofauna are any fauna that live in groundwater systems or aquifers, such as caves, fissures and vugs. Stygofauna and troglofauna are the two types of subterranean fauna. Both are associated with subterranean environments – stygofauna are associated with water, and troglofauna with caves and spaces above the water table. Stygofauna can live within freshwater aquifers and within the pore spaces of limestone, calcrete or laterite, whilst larger animals can be found in cave waters and wells. Stygofaunal animals, like troglofauna, are divided into three groups based on their life history - stygophiles, stygoxenes, and stygobites.
- Stygophiles inhabit both surface and subterranean aquatic environments, but are not necessarily restricted to either.
- Stygoxenes are like stygophiles, except they are defined as accidental or occasional presence in subterranean waters. Stygophiles and stygoxenes may live for part of their lives in caves, but don't complete their life cycle in them.
- Stygobites are obligate, or strictly subterranean, aquatic animals and complete their entire life in this environment.
Species distribution, or speciesdispersion, is the manner in which a biological taxon is spatially arranged. The geographic limits of a particular taxon's distribution is its range, often represented as shaded areas on a map. Patterns of distribution change depending on the scale at which they are viewed, from the arrangement of individuals within a small family unit, to patterns within a population, or the distribution of the entire species as a whole (range). Species distribution is not to be confused with dispersal, which is the movement of individuals away from their region of origin or from a population center of high density.
Although the subject of sexual dimorphism is not in itself controversial, the measures by which it is assessed differ widely. Most of the measures are used on the assumption that a random variable is considered so that probability distributions should be taken into account. In this review, a series of sexual dimorphism measures are discussed concerning both their definition and the probability law on which they are based. Most of them are sample functions, or statistics, which account for only partial characteristics, for example the mean or expected value, of the distribution involved. Further, the most widely used measure fails to incorporate an inferential support.
In ecology, local abundance is the relative representation of a species in a particular ecosystem. It is usually measured as the number of individuals found per sample. The ratio of abundance of one species to one or multiple other species living in an ecosystem is referred to as relative species abundances. Both indicators are relevant for computing biodiversity.
Carl Georg Johannes Petersen was a Danish marine biologist, especially fisheries biologist. He was the first to describe communities of benthic marine invertebrates and is often considered a founder of modern fisheries research. Especially he was the first to use the Mark and recapture method which he used to estimate the size of a Plaice population. The Lincoln-Petersen method is named after him and Frederick Charles Lincoln who first described the method in 1930.
Pre-test probability and post-test probability are the probabilities of the presence of a condition before and after a diagnostic test, respectively. Post-test probability, in turn, can be positive or negative, depending on whether the test falls out as a positive test or a negative test, respectively. In some cases, it is used for the probability of developing the condition of interest in the future.
Taylor's power law is an empirical law in ecology that relates the variance of the number of individuals of a species per unit area of habitat to the corresponding mean by a power law relationship. It is named after the ecologist who first proposed it in 1961, Lionel Roy Taylor (1924–2007). Taylor's original name for this relationship was the law of the mean. The name Taylor's law was coined by Southwood in 1966.
Cross-species transmission (CST), also called interspecies transmission, host jump, or spillover, is the transmission of an infectious pathogen, such as a virus, between hosts belonging to different species. Once introduced into an individual of a new host species, the pathogen may cause disease for the new host and/or acquire the ability to infect other individuals of the same species, allowing it to spread through the new host population. The phenomenon is most commonly studied in virology, but cross-species transmission may also occur with bacterial pathogens or other types of microorganisms.
In ecology, plot sampling is a widely used method of abundance estimation in which specific areas, or plots, are selected from within a survey region and sampled. This approach allows scientists to make population estimates using statistical techniques such as the Horvitz–Thompson estimator. Plot sampling is generally effective when it can be assumed that each survey will identify all of the animals in the sampled area, and that the animals will be distributed uniformly and independently.
The shadow effect is a phenomenon seen in genetic studies that use noninvasive genetic data collection methods. It occurs when there are not enough loci and/or loci that have low variance of alleles within the population. As a result, researchers can capture two separate individuals and mistakenly label them as the same individual. This can create a negative bias in the data and portray a population as smaller and less genetically diverse than it is. This is most commonly seen in collection methods that rely on environmental DNA (eDNA) which is collected directly from the environment. The accuracy of non-invasive collection data can be increased by increasing the amount of loci being examined during the study.