EEB319H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Poisson Distribution, Abalone, Null Hypothesis
16 Sep 2016
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Knowing size of population important for understanding fluctuation in populations size, spatial processes (invasions, population contractions) Need to know size of populations for: ecological monitoring, population dynamics, community structure, conservation biology, resource management. Not easy to figure out how large population is: issues in data collection + statistical estimation. Allows us to know abundance of population absolutely without error. Count every single individual of population: maybe endangered subpopulation of killer whales. Easy to count all of them because not very many. Can see every individual of population: can fence off a stream for migratory population. Population moving through bottleneck so can count them. Take a lot of work (high survey effort) Can get number of individuals and can even get age structure because population is small. Most of time, even if do have a census usually not perfect. Use index that is proportional to abundance.
