Two-Stage Bayesian Study Design for Species Occupancy Estimation

Abstract

A problem of interest for ecology and conservation is that of determining the best allocation of survey effort in studies aimed at estimating the proportion of sites occupied by a species. Many species are difficult to detect and often remain undetected during surveys at sites where they are present. Hence, for the estimator of species occupancy to be unbiased, detectability needs to be taken into account. In such studies there is a trade-off between sampling more sites and expending more survey effort within each site. This design problem has not been addressed to date with an explicit consideration of the uncertainty in assumed parameter values. In this article we apply sequential and Baye..