ABSTRACT
The first part of this chapter covers some basic mark-recapture terminology useful for ecologists interested in the study of animal populations. A crucial feature that is important to identify in any study is whether the sampled population is closed or open, where closed means that the abundance does not change with time and open means that animals may enter and leave the
population between sample times. Historically, the theory of closed markrecapture methods was developed first, and it concerned less-sophisticated procedures in comparison to open-population models. Thus, this chapter focuses on mark-recapture methods applicable to closed populations, with open-population models covered in Chapter 8. Good references for the material reviewed in this chapter and Chapter 8, and for more advanced methods, are the work of Otis et al. (1978), White et al. (1982), Pollock et al. (1990), Williams et al. (2002), and Amstrup et al. (2005).
