Population closure and the bias-precision trade-off in spatial capture-recapture

摘要

Spatial capture-recapture (SCR) is an increasingly popular method for estimating ecological parameters. SCR often relies on data collected over relatively long sampling periods. While longer sampling periods can yield larger sample sizes and thus increase the precision of estimates, they also increase the risk of violating the closure assumption, thereby potentially introducing bias. The sampling period characteristics are therefore likely to play an important role in this bias-precision trade-off. Yet few studies have studied this trade-off and none has done so for SCR models.