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Breeding Population Inventories and Measures of Recruitment

VII. The Future

B. Model Development

Estimates of breeding population size and recruitment rate frequently are used in population models that attempt to mimic the behavior of real populations. Results obtained from these models may be inconsistent (Martin et al. 1979) and should lead to studies designed to determine the source of error in the data. Cowardin and Johnson (1979) pointed out that their predictions of decline in size of Mallard populations were too severe and that there must be populations of Mallards somewhere that were producing at a higher rate than those that they studied. Johnson et al. (1987b) demonstrated the effect of heterogeneity of recruitment rates on estimates of recruitment. In the future there must be feedback from basic biology to model development to improvement of survey methods and procedures for estimating breeding populations and recruitment rate.

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