Plant-capture estimation of the size of a homogeneous population

Abstract

We consider maximum likelihood estimation of the size of a target population to which has been added a known number of planted individuals. The standard equal-catchability model used in mark-recapture is assumed to be applicable to the augmented population. After proving the unimodality of the profile likelihood for the target population size, we obtain both the maximum likelihood estimator of this size and interval estimators based on its asymptotic distribution.