Two-stage sequential Bayesian study design for species estimation

A problem of interest for ecology and conservation is that of determining the best al-

by a species. Many species are difficult to detect and often remain undetected during

to be unbiased, detectability needs to be taken into account. In such studies there is a

site. This design problem has not been addressed to date with an explicit consideration

Bayesian design techniques and show how a simple two-stage design can significantly

survey effort between the two study stages, given a prior distribution for the parame-

how the results change when the sample size is small, considering second-order approx-

efficiency gain, we recommend following the sequential design approach for species

occupancy estimation. This article has supplementary material online.