We propose a mixture of binomial and beta-binomial distributions for estimating the size of closed populations. The new mixture model is applied to several real capture-recapture data sets and is shown to provide a convenient, objective framework for model selection. The new model is compared...

Key ecological studies involve the regular censusing of populations of wild animals, resulting in individual case history data which record when marked individuals are seen alive and/or found dead. We show how current conditional methods of analysing case history data may be biased. We then show...

A major recent development in statistics has been the use of fast computational methods of Markov chain Monte Carlo. These procedures allow Bayesian methods to be used in quite complex modelling situations. In this paper, we shall use a range of real data examples involving lapwings, shags,...

A model, involving a particular set of parameters, is said to be parameter redundant when the likelihood can be expressed in terms of a smaller set of parameters. In many important cases, the parameter redundancy of a model can be checked by evaluating the symbolic rank of a derivative matrix....