Population Estimation Methods

Syllabus tag: KCSE | Biology | Form 3 | Topic 2 Ecology

Lesson objectives

By the end of this topic, you should be able to:

• Explain why populations are estimated rather than counted.
• Use the quadrat method to estimate plant populations.
• Use the capture-recapture method to estimate animal populations.
• State the assumptions and limitations of each method.

Summary

Counting every organism is usually impossible, so populations are estimated from samples. For plants and slow-moving animals, a quadrat is used and the count scaled up to the whole area. For mobile animals, the capture-recapture method is used. Both depend on assumptions, and a result is only as reliable as those assumptions are true.