摘要 : Monitoring the dynamics and status of populations of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) requires efficient methods for estimating population parameters from mark-resight data. We used a test set of photographs from i82 indivi... 展开 Monitoring the dynamics and status of populations of harbor seals (Phoca vitulina richardii) requires efficient methods for estimating population parameters from mark-resight data. We used a test set of photographs from i82 individuals identified by Hipper tags, scars, or unique pelage markings to test whether individuals Could be identified accurately by their ventral pelage markings: to document efficiency and misidentification error rate associated with a computer-assisted photograph-matching system; and to test for bias in mark-recapture survival estimates resulting from misidentification errors. Pelage patterns of seals that were not of clark-intermediate or intermediate color phase Were unique and stable from birth until 6-8 years, and front year to year as adults. The computer-assisted system greatly improved efficiency of photograph matching: 93.3% of good photographs and 69.9% of all photographs ranked i st. and 95.2% of good photographs ranked in the top 0.3% of the ordered list for visual checking. Additional visual matching error averaged <3.0% for good photographs. and overall misidentification error rate was low at 1.8%, due to the availability of Multiple 1)photographs for matching, inclusion of poor-quality photographs reduced ranking Success by similar to 20% and increased additional visual matching error up to 20%. Bias in Survival estimates was -7.0% for a misidentification rate of 8.8%, hin was <= 1.1% for misidentification rates of <2.7%. achieved by restricting data to only good photos. Our Study suggests that estimation of misidentification error rate. inclusion of only high-quality photographs, or use of models that account for misidentification error. are required to prevent bias in mark-recapture survival estimates when using data from natural-marking studies. 收起