Re:How many flies are in my apartment?
by rozab on Friday June 18, 2021 @08:16AM
(#27549535)
Fun idea, but presumably there is a big bias in that some flies will be easier to catch for various reasons. I suppose lots of population studies on birds, cetaceans or whatever have this bias, since you can't just slap a quadrat down and catch everything. In fact with these more advanced animals, perhaps they're harder to observe a second time since they've learned to be wary of humans.
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Right, if you're measuring long enough that predators eating some of the flies could be an issue, then you'd want to mark them with something only visible under a blacklight, or similarly "neutral", so it doesn't introduce a bias.
Re:How many flies are in my apartment?
by marcosdumay on Friday June 18, 2021 @02:23PM
(#27553279)
If predators or age (or moving out or into the measured area) are a factor, they are already biased and keeping your method neutral will still give you very wrong results.