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Mark and recapture lab The Mark-Recapture technique is used to estimate the size of a population where it is impractical to count every individual. The basic idea is that you capture a small number of individuals, put a harmless mark on them, and release them back into the population. At a later date, you catch another small group and record how many have a mark. In a small population, you are more likely to recapture marked individuals, whereas in a large population, you are less likely. This can be expressed mathematically using the equation below. N = (M * C) / R N = estimated number of individuals in the population M = number of individuals captured and marked C = total number captured the second time (with and without a mark) R = number of individuals recaptured (those with a mark) Question What if the mark washed off the animal? Would that cause an over- or under-estimate of the population size? 

          Mark and recapture lab

The Mark-Recapture technique is used to estimate the size of a population where it is impractical to count every individual. The basic idea is that you capture a small number of individuals, put a harmless mark on them, and release them back into the population. At a later date, you catch another small group and record how many have a mark. In a small population, you are more likely to recapture marked individuals, whereas in a large population, you are less likely. This can be expressed mathematically using the equation below.

N = (M * C) / R

N = estimated number of individuals in the population
M = number of individuals captured and marked
C = total number captured the second time (with and without a mark)
R = number of individuals recaptured (those with a mark)

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What if the mark washed off the animal? Would that cause an over- or under-estimate of the population size?
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Biology for AP Courses
Biology for AP Courses
Julianne Zedalis, John Eggebrecht
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Mark and recapture lab The Mark-Recapture technique is used to estimate the size of a population where it is impractical to count every individual. The basic idea is that you capture a small number of individuals, put a harmless mark on them, and release them back into the population. At a later date, you catch another small group and record how many have a mark. In a small population, you are more likely to recapture marked individuals, whereas in a large population, you are less likely. This can be expressed mathematically using the equation below. N = (M * C) / R N = estimated number of individuals in the population M = number of individuals captured and marked C = total number captured the second time (with and without a mark) R = number of individuals recaptured (those with a mark) Question What if the mark washed off the animal? Would that cause an over- or under-estimate of the population size?
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Estimating Population Size Objective: You will be expected to estimate the size of a sample population using the mark-recapture technique. Be able to apply the technique to new population problems and compare the mark and recapture technique to other methods of population estimating. Technique 1: Sampling A technique called sampling is sometimes used to estimate population size. In this procedure, the organisms in a few small areas are counted and projected to the entire area. For instance, if a biologist counts 10 squirrels living in a 200 square foot area, she could predict that there are 100 squirrels living in a 2000 square foot area. 1. A biologist collected 1 gallon of pond water and counted 50 paramecium. Based on the sampling technique, how many paramecium could be found in the pond if the pond were 1,000 gallons? (0.5) 2. What are some problems with this technique? What could affect its accuracy? (1)

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N = (M × S) / R N = population size M = marked individuals released S = size of second sample R = marked animals recaptured Looking at our equation above, explain why we would expect our population size to be large when we recapture very few individuals. Explain this in terms of mathematics as well as verbally.

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Estimating Population Size Objective: You will be expected to estimate the size of a sample population using the mark-recapture technique. Be able to apply the technique to new population problems and compare the mark and recapture technique to other methods of population estimating. Technique 1: Sampling A technique called sampling is sometimes used to estimate population size. In this procedure, the organisms in a few small areas are counted and projected to the entire area. For instance, if a biologist counts 10 squirrels living in a 200 square foot area, she could predict that there are 100 squirrels living in a 2000 square foot area. 1. A biologist collected 1 gallon of pond water and counted 50 paramecium. Based on the sampling technique, how many paramecium could be found in the pond if the pond were 1,000 gallons? (0.5) 2. What are some problems with this technique? What could affect its accuracy? (1)

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Transcript

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00:01 Hello everyone.
00:03 Today we're going to be talking about mark recapture, which is a common technique in ecology.
00:14 This involves some math, and sometimes it gets quite complex and you need to even run some code or do some programs to do it.
00:21 So the technique is used to estimate the size of a population where it's impractical to be able to count every individual.
00:29 So the basic idea is that you capture a small number of individuals, put on some type of mark that's quite harmless on them, and then release them back into population.
00:38 Then you come back into a different sampling interval.
00:44 So a later day you come back.
00:48 And so you're sampling multiple times.
00:58 You record how many have a mark and how many are new.
01:01 In a small population, you're probably going to get some recaptured individuals.
01:06 Whereas in a larger population, you're less likely to get these recaptures or as many of them.
01:12 The equation is the samples of...
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