Spatial capture-recapture

Closed spatial capture-recapture models in PyMC
Author
Affiliations

Philip T. Patton

Marine Mammal Research Program

Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology

Published

October 14, 2025

In this notebook, I show how to train spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models in PyMC. SCR expands upon traditional capture-recapture by incorporating the location of the traps in the analysis. This matters because, typically, animals that live near a particular trap are more likely to be caught in it. In doing so, SCR links individual-level processes to the population-level, expanding the scientific scope of simple designs.

In this notebook, I train the simplest possible SCR model, SCR0 (Royle et al. 2013, chap. 5), where the goal is estimating the true population size \(N\). Similar to the other closed population notebooks, I do so using parameter-expanded data-augmentation (PX-DA). I also borrow the concept of the detection function from the distance sampling notebook.

As a motivating example, I use the ovenbird mist netting dataset provided by Murray Efford via the secr package in R. The design of the study is outlined in Efford, Dawson, and Robbins (2004) and Borchers and Efford (2008). In this dataset, ovenbirds were trapped in 44 mist nets over 8 to 10 consecutive days during the summers of 2005 to 2009.

%config InlineBackend.figure_format = 'retina'

import arviz as az
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import pymc as pm
import pymc_extras as pmx
import pytensor.tensor as pt
import seaborn as sns

# only necessary on MacOS Sequoia
# https://discourse.pymc.io/t/pytensor-fails-to-compile-model-after-upgrading-to-mac-os-15-4/16796/5
import pytensor
pytensor.config.cxx = '/usr/bin/clang++'

# hyper parameters
SEED = 42
RNG = np.random.default_rng(SEED)
BUFFER = 100
M = 200

# plotting defaults
plt.style.use('fivethirtyeight')
plt.rcParams['axes.facecolor'] = 'white'
plt.rcParams['figure.facecolor'] = 'white'
plt.rcParams['axes.spines.left'] = False
plt.rcParams['axes.spines.right'] = False
plt.rcParams['axes.spines.top'] = False
plt.rcParams['axes.spines.bottom'] = False
sns.set_palette("tab10")

def invlogit(x):
    '''Inverse logit function'''
    return 1 / (1 + np.exp(-x))

def euclid_dist(X, S, library='np'):
    '''Pairwise euclidian distance between points in (M, 2) and (N, 2) arrays'''
    diff = X[np.newaxis, :, :] - S[:, np.newaxis, :]

    if library == 'np':
        return np.sqrt(np.sum(diff ** 2, axis=-1))

    elif library == 'pm':
        return pm.math.sqrt(pm.math.sum(diff ** 2, axis=-1))

def half_normal(d, s, library='np'):
    '''Half normal detection function.'''
    if library == 'np':
        return np.exp( - (d ** 2) / (2 * s ** 2))

    elif library == 'pm':
        return pm.math.exp( - (d ** 2) / (2 * s ** 2))

def exponential(d, s, library='np'):
    '''Negative exponential detection function.'''
    if library == 'np':
        return np.exp(- d / s)

    elif library == 'pm':
        return pm.math.exp(- d / s)

# coordinates for each trap
ovenbird_trap = pd.read_csv('ovenbirdtrap.txt', delimiter=' ')
trap_count, _ = ovenbird_trap.shape

# information about each trap
trap_x = ovenbird_trap.x
trap_y = ovenbird_trap.y
X = ovenbird_trap[['x', 'y']].to_numpy()

# define the state space around the traps
x_max = trap_x.max() + BUFFER
y_max = trap_y.max() + BUFFER
x_min = trap_x.min() - BUFFER
y_min = trap_y.min() - BUFFER

# scale for plotting
scale = (y_max - y_min) / (x_max - x_min)

# plot the trap locations
plot_width = 2
plot_height = plot_width * scale
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(plot_width, plot_height))

# plot the traps
ax.scatter(trap_x, trap_y, marker='x', s=40, linewidth=1.5, color='C1')
ax.set_ylim((y_min, y_max))
ax.set_xlim((x_min, x_max))

ax.annotate(
    '44 nets\n30m apart', ha='center',
    xy=(55, -150), xycoords='data', color='black',
    xytext=(40, 30), textcoords='offset points',
    arrowprops=dict(arrowstyle="->", color='black', linewidth=1,
                    connectionstyle="angle3,angleA=90,angleB=0"))

# aesthetics
ax.set_aspect('equal')
ax.set_title('Mist net locations')
ax.grid(False)
plt.show()
Figure 1: Locations of the mist nets in the ovenbird dataset (Efford, Dawson, and Robbins 2004)

One difference between spatial and traditional (non-spatial) capture is the addition of the trap identifier in the capture history. Whereas a traditional capture history is [individual, occasion], a spatial capture history might be [individual, occasion, trap].

In the ovenbird example, I ignore the year dimension, pooling parameters across years, which allows for better estimation of the detection parameters. My hack for doing so is treating every band/year combination as a unique individual in a combined year capture history. This is easy to implement, creates an awkward interpretation of \(N\) (see below).

# ovenbird capture history
oven_ch = pd.read_csv('ovenbirdcapt.txt', delimiter=' ')

# create a unique bird/year identifier for each individual
oven_ch['ID'] = oven_ch.groupby(['Year','Band']).ngroup()
occasion_count = oven_ch.Day.max()

# merge the datasets, making sure that traps with no detections are included
ovenbird = (
    ovenbird_trap.merge(oven_ch[['ID', 'Net', 'Day']], how='left')
      [['ID', 'Day', 'Net', 'x', 'y']]
      .sort_values('ID')
      .reset_index(drop=True)
)

ovenbird.head(10)
ID Day Net x y
0 0.0 1.0 2 -50.0 -255.0
1 1.0 9.0 20 -50.0 285.0
2 1.0 1.0 15 -50.0 135.0
3 2.0 6.0 17 -50.0 195.0
4 2.0 9.0 27 49.0 165.0
5 2.0 1.0 15 -50.0 135.0
6 2.0 1.0 14 -50.0 105.0
7 3.0 1.0 41 49.0 -255.0
8 3.0 3.0 39 49.0 -195.0
9 3.0 1.0 42 49.0 -285.0

Simulation

Before estimating the parameters, I perform a small simulation. The simulation starts with a core idea of SCR: the activity center. The activity center \(\mathbf{s}_i\) is the most likely place that you’d find an individual \(i\) over the course of the trapping study. In this case, I assume that activity centers are uniformly distributed across the sample space.

I compute the probability of detection for individual \(i\) at trap \(j\) as \(p_{i,j}=g_0 \exp(-d_{i,j}^2/2\sigma^2),\) where \(g_0\) is the probability of detecting an individual when it’s activity center is at the trap, \(d_{i,j}\) is the euclidean distance between the trap and the activity center, and \(\sigma\) is the detection range parameter.

# true population size
N = 150

# simulate activity centers
S_true = RNG.uniform((x_min, y_min), (x_max, y_max), (N, 2))

# true distance between the trap and the activity centers
d_true = euclid_dist(X, S_true)

# detection parameters
g0_true = 0.025
sigma_true = 73

# simulate the number of captures at each trap for each individual
capture_probability = g0_true * half_normal(d_true, sigma_true)
sim_Y = RNG.binomial(occasion_count, capture_probability)

# filter out undetected individuals
was_detected = sim_Y.sum(axis=1) > 0
sim_Y_det = sim_Y[was_detected]
n_detected = int(was_detected.sum())

Following Royle et al. (2013), Chapter 5, I first fit the version of the model where we assume that we know the true population size. In this case, I’m only estimating the detection parameters and the activity center locations.

# upper bound for the uniform prior on sigma
U_SIGMA = 150

with pm.Model() as known:

    # priors for the activity centers
    S = pm.Uniform('S', (x_min, y_min), (x_max, y_max), shape=(n_detected, 2))

    # priors for the detection parameters
    g0 = pm.Uniform('g0', 0, 1)
    sigma = pm.Uniform('sigma', 0, U_SIGMA)

    # probability of capture for each individual at each trap
    distance = euclid_dist(X, S, 'pm')
    p = pm.Deterministic('p', g0 * half_normal(distance, sigma))

    # likelihood
    pm.Binomial(
        'y',
        p=p,
        n=occasion_count,
        observed=sim_Y_det
    )

pm.model_to_graphviz(known)
Figure 2: Visual representation of the model where \(N\) is known.

NUTS sampler

Throughout these notebooks, I have been estimating parameters with the default NUTS sampler in PyMC. One of PyMC’s great strengths is that it allows you to select different samplers with the same model code. We saw one version of this in the occupancy notebook, where we had a Binary Gibbs Sampler for the discrete \(z_i\) state and a NUTS sampler for the continuous parameters. But PyMC goes one step further, allowing you to choose different NUTS samplers. These include numpyro, which is itself a package for MCMC that can run on GPUs. Additionally, there is the nutpie sampler that is ultimately written in Rust. In most cases, nutpie is much faster than the default PyMC sampler. That said, nutpie can slightly less flexible.

Since the SCR models in this notebook take a little longer to run, I will use the nutpie sampler throughout. The difference can be substantial. For instance, the unknown \(N\) model below takes 39 seconds with the default sampler, and 13 seconds with the nutpie sampler.

with known:
    known_idata = pm.sample(nuts_sampler='nutpie')

Sampler Progress

Total Chains: 4

Active Chains: 0

Finished Chains: 4

Sampling for now

Estimated Time to Completion: now

Progress Draws Divergences Step Size Gradients/Draw
2000 0 0.33 15
2000 0 0.33 15
2000 0 0.33 15
2000 0 0.34 15 
az.summary(known_idata, var_names=['g0', 'sigma'])
mean sd hdi_3% hdi_97% mcse_mean mcse_sd ess_bulk ess_tail r_hat
g0 0.022 0.003 0.017 0.028 0.000 0.000 864.0 1497.0 1.0
sigma 94.783 7.965 80.985 109.960 0.344 0.228 557.0 1103.0 1.0 
az.plot_trace(
    known_idata,
    var_names=['g0', 'sigma'],
    figsize=(8,4),
    lines=[("g0", {}, [g0_true]), ("sigma", {}, [sigma_true])]
);
Figure 3: Trace plots for model where \(N\) is known. The true parameter values are shown by vertical and horizontal lines.

The trace plots show reasonable agreement between the true parameter values and the estimated values, although \(g_0\) appears to be overestimated.

Ovenbird density

Now, I estimate the density \(D\) for the ovenbird population. Like distance sampling, SCR can robustly estimate the density of the population, regardless of the size of the state space. The difference between the model above and this one is that we use PX-DA to estimate the inclusion probability \(\psi,\) and subsequently \(N.\) First, I convert the DataFrame to a (n_detected, n_traps) array of binomial counts.

def get_Y(ch):
    '''Get a (individual_count, trap_count) array of detections.'''

    # count the number of detections per individual per trap
    detection_counts = pd.crosstab(ch.ID, ch.Net, dropna=False)

    # remove the ghost nan individual
    detection_counts = detection_counts.loc[~detection_counts.index.isna()]

    Y = detection_counts.to_numpy()
    return Y

Y = get_Y(ovenbird)
detected_count, trap_count = Y.shape

# augmented spatial capture histories with all zero histories
all_zero_history = np.zeros((M - detected_count, trap_count))
Y_augmented = np.vstack((Y, all_zero_history))

As with the other closed models in this series, I will write the model in terms of the latent inclusion state \(z_i\). Interestingly, .

with pm.Model() as oven:

    # Priors
    # activity centers
    S = pm.Uniform('S', (x_min, y_min), (x_max, y_max), shape=(M, 2))

    # capture parameters
    g0 = pm.Uniform('g0', 0, 1)
    sigma = pm.Uniform('sigma', 0, U_SIGMA)

    # inclusion probability
    psi = pm.Beta('psi', 0.001, 1)

    # compute the capture probability
    distance = euclid_dist(X, S, 'pm')
    p = pm.Deterministic('p', g0 * half_normal(distance, sigma))

    # inclusion state
    z = pm.Bernoulli('z', psi, shape=M)

    # likelihood
    mu_y = z[:, None] * p
    pm.Binomial('y', p=mu_y, n=occasion_count, observed=Y_augmented)

pm.model_to_graphviz(oven)
Figure 4: Visual representation of the ovenbird model using data augmentation. 
oven_marginal = pmx.marginalize(oven, ['z'])
with oven_marginal:
    oven_idata = pm.sample(nuts_sampler='nutpie')

Sampler Progress

Total Chains: 4

Active Chains: 0

Finished Chains: 4

Sampling for 13 seconds

Estimated Time to Completion: now

Progress Draws Divergences Step Size Gradients/Draw
2000 0 0.29 15
2000 0 0.29 15
2000 0 0.29 15
2000 0 0.29 15 
az.summary(oven_idata, var_names=['g0', 'sigma', 'psi'])
mean sd hdi_3% hdi_97% mcse_mean mcse_sd ess_bulk ess_tail r_hat
g0 0.029 0.004 0.023 0.037 0.000 0.000 1264.0 2200.0 1.0
sigma 71.371 4.563 63.488 80.193 0.172 0.098 724.0 1263.0 1.0
psi 0.700 0.056 0.598 0.808 0.001 0.001 3391.0 2484.0 1.0 
g0_mle = [0.025]
sigma_mle = [73]

az.plot_trace(
    oven_idata,
    var_names=['g0', 'sigma'],
    figsize=(8,4),
    lines=[("g0", {}, [g0_mle]), ("sigma", {}, [sigma_mle])]
);
Figure 5: Trace plots for the ovenbird model using data augmentation. Maximum likelihood estimates are shown by vertical and horizontal lines.

The estimates are quite close to the maximum likelihood estimates, which I estimated with the secr package in R.

Finally, I estimate density \(D\) using the results. As in the closed capture-recapture and distance sampling notebooks, I use the posterior samples of \(\psi\) and \(M\) to sample the posterior of \(N.\) This \(N,\) however, has an awkward interpretation because I pooled across the years by combining all the detection histories. To get around this, I compute the average annual abundance by dividing by the total number of years in the sample. Then, I divide by the area of the state space.

def sim_N(idata, n, K):

    psi_samps = az.extract(idata).psi.to_numpy()
    p_samps = az.extract(idata).p
    p_samps_undet = p_samps[n:, :, :]

    bin_probs = (1 - p_samps_undet) ** K
    bin_prod = bin_probs.prod(axis=1)
    p_included = (bin_prod * psi_samps) / (bin_prod * psi_samps  + (1 - psi_samps))

    number_undetected = RNG.binomial(1, p_included).sum(axis=0)
    N_samps = n + number_undetected

    return N_samps
N_samps = sim_N(oven_idata, detected_count, occasion_count)

# kludgy way of calculating avergage abundance
year_count = 5
average_annual_abundance = N_samps // year_count

# area of the state space in terms of hectares
ha = 100 * 100
mask_area = (x_max - x_min) * (y_max - y_min) / ha

# density
D_samples = average_annual_abundance / mask_area
D_mle = 1.262946

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(4,4))
ax.hist(D_samples, edgecolor='white', bins=13)
ax.axvline(D_mle, linestyle='--',color='C1')
ax.set_xlabel('Ovenbirds per hectare')
ax.set_ylabel('Number of samples')
ax.text(1.4, 800, rf'$\hat{{D}}$={D_samples.mean():.2f}', va='bottom', ha='left')
plt.show()
Figure 6: Posterior distribution of the density \(D\) of ovenbirds. The maximum likelihood estimate is shown by the dotted red line.

Sometimes, the location of the activity centers is of interest. Below, I plot the posterior median for the activity centers for the detected individuals.

s_samps = az.extract(oven_idata).S
s_mean = np.median(s_samps[:detected_count], axis=2)

# plot the trap locations
plot_width = 3
plot_height = plot_width * scale
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(plot_width, plot_height))

# plot the traps
ax.scatter(trap_x, trap_y, marker='x', s=40, linewidth=1.5, color='C1')
ax.set_ylim((y_min, y_max))
ax.set_xlim((x_min, x_max))

# plot the mean activity centers
ax.scatter(s_mean[:, 0], s_mean[:, 1], marker='o', s=4, color='C0')

# aesthetics
ax.set_aspect('equal')
ax.set_title('Estimated activity centers')
ax.grid(False)
Figure 7: Estimated activity centers for the detected individuals

We can also look at the uncertainty around those estimates. Below, I plot the posterior distribution of the activity centers for two individuals.

one = 49
one_samps = s_samps[one]

two = 2
two_samps = s_samps[two]

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(plot_width, plot_height))

# plot the traps
ax.scatter(trap_x, trap_y, marker='x', s=40, linewidth=1.5, color='tab:cyan')
ax.set_ylim((y_min, y_max))
ax.set_xlim((x_min, x_max))

# plot the distributions of the activity centers
ax.scatter(one_samps[0], one_samps[1], marker='o', s=1, color='tab:pink', alpha=0.4)
ax.scatter(two_samps[0], two_samps[1], marker='o', s=1, color='tab:purple', alpha=0.4)

# plot the mean
ax.scatter(one_samps[0].mean(), one_samps[1].mean(), marker='o', s=40, color='w')
ax.scatter(two_samps[0].mean(), two_samps[1].mean(), marker='o', s=40, color='w')

# add the label
ax.text(one_samps[0].mean(), one_samps[1].mean() + 5, f'{one}', ha='center', va='bottom')
ax.text(two_samps[0].mean(), two_samps[1].mean() + 5, f'{two}', ha='center', va='bottom')

# aesthetics
ax.set_aspect('equal')
ax.set_title('Posterior of two activity centers')
ax.grid(False)
plt.show()
Figure 8: Posterior distributions for two activity centers.

Finally, I plot the posterior distribution of the detection function.

xx = np.arange(BUFFER * 2)

sigma_samps = az.extract(oven_idata).sigma.values.flatten()
g0_samps = az.extract(oven_idata).g0.values.flatten()

p_samps = np.array(
    [g * half_normal(xx, s) for g, s in zip(g0_samps, sigma_samps)]
)

p_mean = p_samps.mean(axis=0)
p_low = np.quantile(p_samps, 0.02, axis=0)
p_high = np.quantile(p_samps, 0.98, axis=0)

fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(5,4))

ax.plot(xx, p_mean, '-')
ax.fill_between(xx, p_low, p_high, alpha=0.2)

ax.set_title('Detection function')
ax.set_ylabel(r'$p$')
ax.set_xlabel(r'Distance (m)')

plt.show()
Figure 9: Posterior distribution for the detection function. The line represents the posterior mean while the shaded area is the 96% interval. 
%load_ext watermark

%watermark -n -u -v -iv -w
The watermark extension is already loaded. To reload it, use:
  %reload_ext watermark
Last updated: Tue Oct 14 2025

Python implementation: CPython
Python version       : 3.13.3
IPython version      : 9.2.0

pytensor   : 2.31.7
pandas     : 2.2.3
matplotlib : 3.10.1
arviz      : 0.21.0
seaborn    : 0.13.2
numpy      : 2.2.5
pymc_extras: 0.5.0
pymc       : 5.25.1

Watermark: 2.5.0

References

Borchers, David L, and MG2432407 Efford. 2008. “Spatially Explicit Maximum Likelihood Methods for Capture–Recapture Studies.” Biometrics 64 (2): 377–85.
Efford, Murray G, Deanna K Dawson, and Chandler S Robbins. 2004. “DENSITY: Software for Analysing Capture-Recapture Data from Passive Detector Arrays.” Animal Biodiversity and Conservation 27 (1): 217–28.
Royle, J Andrew, Richard B Chandler, Rahel Sollmann, and Beth Gardner. 2013. Spatial Capture-Recapture. Academic press.