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This comprehensive book covers a wide variety of methods for estimating the sizes and related parameters of closed populations. With the effect of climate change, and human territory invasion, we have seen huge species losses and a major biodiversity decline. Populations include plants, trees, various land and sea animals, and some human populations. With such a diversity of populations, an extensive variety of different methods are described with the collection of different types of data. For example, we have count data from plot sampling, which can also allow for incomplete detection. There is a large chapter on occupancy methods where a major interest is determining whether a particular species is present or not. Citizen and opportunistic survey data can also be incorporated. A related topic is species methods, where species richness and species'interactions are of interest. A variety of distance methods are discussed. One can use distances from points and lines, as wellas nearest neighbor distances. The applications are extensive, and include marine, acoustic, and aerial surveys, using multiple observers or detection devices. Line intercept measurements have a role to play such as, for example, estimating parameters relating to plant coverage. An increasingly important class of removal methods considers successive “removals'from a population, with physical removal or'removal'by capture-recapture of marked individuals. With the change-in-ratio method, removals are taken from two or more classes, e.g., males and females. Effort data used for removals can also be used. A very important method for estimating abundance is the use of capture-recapture data collected discretely or continuously and can be analysed using both frequency and Bayesian methods. Computational aspects of fitting Bayesian models are described. A related topic of growing interest is the use of spatial and camera methods. With the plethora of models there has been a corresponding development of various computational methods and packages, which are often mentioned throughout. Covariate data is being used more frequently, which can reduce the number of unknown parameters by using logistic and loglinear models. An important computational aspect is that of model selection methods. The book provides a useful list of over 1400 references.

This comprehensive book, rich with applications, offers a quantitative framework for the analysis of the various capture-recapture models for open animal populations, while also addressing associated computational methods. The state of our wildlife populations provides a litmus test for the state of our environment, especially in light of global warming and the increasing pollution of our land, seas, and air. In addition to monitoring our food resources such as fisheries, we need to protect endangered species from the effects of human activities (e.g. rhinos, whales, or encroachments on the habitat of orangutans). Pests must be be controlled, whether insects or viruses, and we need to cope with growing feral populations such as opossums, rabbits, and pigs. Accordingly, we need to obtain information about a given population's dynamics, concerning e.g. mortality, birth, growth, breeding, sex, and migration, and determine whether the respective population is increasing, static, or declining. There are many methods for obtaining population information, but the most useful (and most work-intensive) is generically known as “capture-recapture,” where we mark or tag a representative sample of individuals from the population and follow that sample over time using recaptures, resightings, or dead recoveries. Marks can be natural, such as stripes, fin profiles, and even DNA; or artificial, such as spots on insects. Attached tags can, for example, be simple bands or streamers, or more sophisticated variants such as radio and sonic transmitters. To estimate population parameters, sophisticated and complex mathematical models have been devised on the basis of recapture information and computer packages. This book addresses the analysis of such models. It is primarily intended for ecologists and wildlife managers who wish to apply the methods to the types of problems discussed above, though it will also benefit researchers and graduate students in ecology. Familiarity with basic statistical concepts is essential.

Seals and Society arises from a major project investigating seals and their use in medieval Wales, the Welsh March and neighbouring counties in England. The first major study of seals in the context of one part of medieval Western European society, the volume also offers a new perspective on the history of medieval Wales and its periphery by addressing a variety of themes in terms of the insight that seals can offer the historian. Though the present study suggests important regional distinctions in the take-up of seals in medieval Wales, it is also clear that seal usage increased from the later twelfth century and spread widely in Welsh society, especially in those parts of Wales neighbouring England or where there had been an early English incursion. Through a series of chapters, the authors examine the ways in which seals can shed light on the legal, administrative, social and economic history of the period in Wales and its border region. Seals provide unique insights into the choices individuals, men and women, made in representing themselves to the wider world, and this issue is examined closely. Supported by almost 100 images gathered by the project team, the volume is of great interest to those working on seals, their motifs, their use and developments in their usage over the high and later Middle Ages.

Seals and their Context in the Middle Ages offers an extensive overview of approaches to and the potential of sigillography, as well as introducing a wider readership to the range, interest and artistry of medieval seals. Seals were used throughout medieval society in a wide range of contexts: royal, governmental, ecclesiastical, legal, in trade and commerce and on an individual and personal level. The fourteen papers presented here, which originate from a conference held in Aberystwyth in April 2012, focus primarily on British material but there is also useful reference to continental Europe. The volume is divided into three sections looking at the history and use of seals as symbols and representations of power and prestige in a variety of institutional, dynastic and individual contexts, their role in law and legal practice, and aspects of their manufacture, sources and artistic attributes. Importantly and distinctively, the volume moves beyond the study of high status seals to consider such themes as the social and economic status of seal-makers, the nature and meaning – including reflections of deliberate wit and boastfulness – of specific motifs employed at various levels of society, and the distribution of seals in relation to the location of, for instance, religious institutions and along major routeways. In so doing, it sets out ways in which sigillography can open new pathways into the study of non-elites and their cultures in medieval society.

This is a major contribution to the study of medieval Wales by a group of outstanding British historians, writing in honour of one of Wales's most distinguished scholars and the biographer of Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. The essays reflect exciting trends in the study of both Wales and the Middle Ages, including church building, chronicle writing, the comparative history of the law, valuable reassessments of town life and the implications of the Edwardian conquest of Wales.