One of the most common and pervasive questions in applied ecology relates to the size of a given population. How many animals are there? The question is intrinsically interesting, but perhaps even more important from an applied perspective, the actual answer has implications for most ecological processes affecting that population. The effective management of a population is not possible without knowing at least approximately how many individuals it includes. As an example, for a small population, a given mortality rate due to a newly introduced human disturbance might be important and a matter of concern, quickly leading the population to local extinction, but essentially not ecologically relevant for an abundant population. Therefore, knowledge about abundance is required to adequately interpret a wide variety of ecological processes affecting a given population.
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