Publication Abstract

Inferences from spatial surveys about the distribution of patch size of an unobserved species

M.D. Nicholson and J. Barry

A species may be present in the environment but remain undetected in a spatial survey. To characterize the distribution of a species that could have been missed, a Bayesian approach is used to make inferences about the number and size of circular patches of the species that could exist when it was not observed. In the simple case of random sampling, we derive an explicit form for the posterior distribution of the largest patch radius that could have been missed by using a Rayleigh distribution to model the distribution of patch radii and one of three probability models for the patch frequency. The results are illustrated by using a survey carried out in UK waters to detect spat of the non-indigenous Manila clam Tapes philippinarum.

Reference:

M.D. Nicholson and J. Barry, 1999. Inferences from spatial surveys about the distribution of patch size of an unobserved species. Statistician, 48: 327-337.