Practice question

Mark-recapture approaches like Lincoln-Petersen estimator calculate population size from proportion of marked individuals recaptured. Validity rests on critical assumptions: population closure, marks not lost, and equal catchability. If certain animals are trap-shy or trap-happy, marked fraction becomes biased, under- or overestimating abundance. Equal probability of capture for every individual during each sampling event ensures random mixing of marked and unmarked animals. Assumptions about random death or birth are less central than capture equality, which directly affects estimator mathematics and field protocol design for wildlife census.