SPAS

The Stratified-Petersen Analysis System (SPAS) is designed to estimate abundance in two-sample capture-recapture experiments where the capture and recaptures are stratified. This is a generalization of the simple Lincoln-Petersen estimator. Strata may be defined in time or in space or both, and the s strata in which marking takes place may differ from the t strata in which recoveries take place. When s=t, SPAS reduces to the method described by Darroch (1961) . When s. Schwarz and Taylor (1998) describe the use of SPAS in estimating return of salmon stratified by time and geography. A related package, BTSPAS, deals with temporal stratification where a spline is used to model the distribution of the population over time as it passes the second capture location. This is the R-version of the (now obsolete) standalone Windows program available at .