ABSTRACT
The estimation of species richness is one of the oldest problems both in statistics and ecology. In this setting, species richness refers to the number of species present in a given place at a given time. The general problem is described in the introduction of this book and traces back to Fisher et al. [123]: based on the number f1, f2, f3 . . . of species for which 122one, two, three, . . . individuals have been observed respectively, one wants to estimate the total number of present species. Obviously, this amounts to evaluating the number f0 of unobserved species. Although the problem was first raised in the context of ecology, it occurs in a wide variety of domains such as sociology (van der Heijden et al. [280], Example 1.2.2), epidemiology (Cullen et al. [92], Böhning [35,39], Hser [149], Examples 1.2.3 to 1.2.7), computer sciences (Chun [83], Example 1.2.8) and literature (Efron and Thisted [109], Example 1.2.13).
