Colour-ring wear and loss effects in citizen science mark-resighting studies

Ring wear and loss may have important consequences for mark-recapture studies that aim to estimate survival trends. Our study quantifies the rates of wear and loss from a long-running colour-ringing project of the Eurasian Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) in the Netherlands. Our analysis included 8909 colour-ringed oystercatchers with 118,071 resightings, predominantly ringed and observed by citizen scientists. We quantified how ring wear...