Plant-Capture Methods for Estimating Population Size from Uncertain Plant Captures

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Yiran, Lysy, Martin, Béliveau, Audrey
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Wang, Yiran
Lysy, Martin
Béliveau, Audrey
author_facet Wang, Yiran
Lysy, Martin
Béliveau, Audrey
contents Plant-capture is a variant of classical capture-recapture methods used to estimate the size of a population. In this method, decoys referred to as "plants" are introduced into the population in order to estimate the capture probability. The method has shown considerable success in estimating population sizes from limited samples in many epidemiological, ecological, and demographic studies. However, previous plant-recapture studies have not systematically accounted for uncertainty in the capture status of each individual plant. In this work, we propose various approaches to formally incorporate uncertainty into the plant-capture model arising from (i) the capture status of plants and (ii) the heterogeneity between multiple survey sites. We present two inference methods and compare their performance in simulation studies. We then apply our methods to estimate the size of the homeless population in several US cities using the large-scale "S-night" study conducted by the US Census Bureau.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_04058
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Plant-Capture Methods for Estimating Population Size from Uncertain Plant Captures
Wang, Yiran
Lysy, Martin
Béliveau, Audrey
Methodology
Statistics Theory
Applications
Plant-capture is a variant of classical capture-recapture methods used to estimate the size of a population. In this method, decoys referred to as "plants" are introduced into the population in order to estimate the capture probability. The method has shown considerable success in estimating population sizes from limited samples in many epidemiological, ecological, and demographic studies. However, previous plant-recapture studies have not systematically accounted for uncertainty in the capture status of each individual plant. In this work, we propose various approaches to formally incorporate uncertainty into the plant-capture model arising from (i) the capture status of plants and (ii) the heterogeneity between multiple survey sites. We present two inference methods and compare their performance in simulation studies. We then apply our methods to estimate the size of the homeless population in several US cities using the large-scale "S-night" study conducted by the US Census Bureau.
title Plant-Capture Methods for Estimating Population Size from Uncertain Plant Captures
topic Methodology
Statistics Theory
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04058