ABSTRACT
In this brief note authors consider the use of meta-analysis to combine or synthesize the results of several capture-recapture (or equivalently, species richness estimation) studies. Authors carried out a comprehensive literature search on this topic in early 2016, which yielded about 40 potential candidate articles, but only one addressed the problem directly. There were of course many other interesting papers, and authors mention three of these. J. Koricheva and J. Gurevitch reviewed and classified meta-analysis studies in plant ecology: in their classification our problem would fall under "combining results of multisite or multiyear experiments," although they do not give any examples where population size is the target parameter. This chapter addresses (among other things) hypothesis tests, parameter estimates, and goodness-of-fit considerations. The purpose here is not to reproduce that paper, but to apply its methods to the grizzly bear data, which is an example of a multiyear study, and to consider some future directions for research in this area.
