Question

You were given the job of measuring the population size of kangaroo rats, a small nocturnal mammal in the Sonoran Desert (look them up, they are cute) in an area that is about to be bulldozed for a housing development. You use Sherman traps and the mark and recapture method. You set up 50 traps along 5 transect lines and trap 19 kangaroo rats, 3 packrats, and 2 species of pocket mice. You decide to mark all of the animals you capture. Five days later you repeat the process. This time you capture 23 kangaroo rats, 11 of which were marked; 3 packrats, all of which were marked, and no pocket mice. What would you do to increase the accuracy of the estimate of the kangaroo rat population size? What is the most accurate way? 1. Use more traps, but only trap on two nights. 2. Use an additional monitoring method such as trail cameras. 3. Use two traps at each location along the transect line. 4. Repeat the mark and recapture study over several nights to increase the replicate size.

          You were given the job of measuring the population size of kangaroo rats, a small nocturnal mammal in the Sonoran Desert (look them up, they are cute) in an area that is about to be bulldozed for a housing development. You use Sherman traps and the mark and recapture method. You set up 50 traps along 5 transect lines and trap 19 kangaroo rats, 3 packrats, and 2 species of pocket mice. You decide to mark all of the animals you capture. Five days later you repeat the process. This time you capture 23 kangaroo rats, 11 of which were marked; 3 packrats, all of which were marked, and no pocket mice.
What would you do to increase the accuracy of the estimate of the kangaroo rat population size? What is the most accurate way?
1. Use more traps, but only trap on two nights.
2. Use an additional monitoring method such as trail cameras.
3. Use two traps at each location along the transect line.
4. Repeat the mark and recapture study over several nights to increase the replicate size.

Added by Mark B.

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