An estimator of number of species from quadrat sampling.
We consider the problem of estimating the number of distinct species S in a study area from the recorded presence or absence of species in each of a sample of quadrats. A generalized jackknife estimator of S is derived, along with an estimate of its variance. It is compared with the jackknife estimator for S proposed by Heltshe and Forrester and the empirical Bayes estimator of Mingoti and Meeden. We show that the empirical Bayes estimator has the form of a generalized jackknife estimator under a specific model for species distribution. We compare the new estimators of S to the empirical Bayes estimator via simulation. We characterize circumstances under which each is superior.
IBM Almaden Research Center, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA.
Peter J
PJ
Haas
Yushan
Y
Liu
Lynne
L
Stokes
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003710:Demography; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods