Wildlife Demography

"The author's exhaustive treatment of analytical techniques including listing assumptions, strengths and limitations, example calculations, and decision trees, makes this text an excellent reference for any advanced wildlife student or professional. It is an excellent compendium that replaces an entire file drawer of reprints I have accumulated over the past 25 years." --Robert A. Garrott, Montana State University, Bozeman"Methodological progress in wildlife population ecology, like temporal change in taxonomic diversity, can be characterized as “punctuated equilibrium”, with long periods of stasis and slow growth punctuated by short periods of rapid development. Synthetic monographs and books have catalyzed these periods of rapid development, providing updated starting points upon which extensions and new models are based. Wildlife Demography will provide such a synthetic basis for methods based on sex and age ratio data and should lead to rapid progress in approaches that combine these and other data types for improved demographic inference." --James D. Nichols, Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, USGS"This book provides a comprehensive introduction to techniques for estimating demographic parameters with sex, age and count data. It is unique in that it focuses solely on these approaches, using data that can often be obtained very cost-effectively and that are routinely collected by many wildlife agencies. Strengths of the book include careful lists of assumptions for each method with concrete examples to illustrate their application and a final chapter that demonstrates how multiple sources of data can be effectively combined using joint-likelihoods. This book will make an excellent textbook for students of wildlife demography and will serve as a useful reference for practicing wildlife biologists and managers." --Mark S. Udevitz, USGS Alaska Science Center, Anchorage

• Ch. 1: IntroductionCh. 2: Primer on Wildlife Population DynamicsCh. 3: Estimating Population Sex RatiosCh. 4: Estimating ProductivityCh. 5: Estimating SurvivalCh. 6: Estimating Harvest and Harvest MortalityCh. 7: Estimating the Rate of Population ChangeCh. 8: Analysis of Population IndicesCh. 9: Estimating Population AbundanceCh.10: Integration of Analytical TechniquesCh.11: Literature CitedAppendix A: Statistical Concepts and TheoryAppendix B: Glossary of SymbolsAppendix C: Program USERAppendix D: Mathematica Code for Calculating the Variance of the Finite Rate of Population Change, VAR, from a Matrix Population Model