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Program MARK Workshop, June 7-11, 1999

Intermediate-Level Program MARK Workshop

                              June 7-11, 1999, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO	

                                     Supported by the Wildlife Management Institute

Program MARK, a Windows 95 program, provides parameter estimates of survival, recruitment, and population size from marked animals when they are re-encountered at a later time.  Re-encounters can be from dead recoveries (e.g., the animal is harvested), live recaptures (e.g. the animal is re-trapped or re-sighted), radio tracking, or from some combination of these sources of re-encounters.  The time intervals between re-encounters do not have to be equal, but are assumed to be 1 time unit if not specified. More than one attribute group of animals can be modeled, e.g., treatment and control animals, and covariates specific to the group or the individual animal can be used. The basic input to program MARK is the encounter history for each animal.  MARK can also provide estimates of population size for open and closed populations.

Program MARK computes the estimates of model parameters via numerical maximum likelihood techniques. The FORTRAN program that does this computation also determines numerically the number of parameters that are estimable in the model, and reports its guess of one parameter that is not estimable if one or more parameters are not estimable.  The number of estimable parameters is used to compute the quasi-likelihood AIC value (QAICc) for the model.  Outputs for various models that the user has built (fit) are stored in a database, known as the Results Database. The input data are also stored in this database, making it a complete description of the model building process. The database is viewed and manipulated in a Results Browser window.

This intermediate-level workshop will provide quantitative biologists and statisticians with the statistical background to understand the main-stream analyses performed by Program MARK, and the familiarity with the program to perform these analyses.  A mixture of lectures and laboratory exercises will be provided.  Participants will learn the basics of parameter estimation with likelihood theory, model selection with Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), and the binomial and multinomial distributions.   The Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS) mark-recapture, band (tag or ring) recovery, known fate, and closed captures models will be covered in detail.  More advanced models will be described so that participants will understand the benefits of these models, but those models would not be covered extensively.   Use of covariates, including individual covariates, will be covered with the CJS and band recovery models.

The clientele for this workshop are biologists with past experience in the analysis of data from marked animals.  The content is aimed at providing the participants with a solid background in the philosophy, theory, and analysis of data from marked animals.  This is not a workshop for beginners to this subject.

Format of the workshop will be a combination of lectures and computer lab exercises.  The workshop would start on Monday morning, June 7, 1999, and end Friday at noon.  Evening sessions would be provided as needed to cover the workshop material.
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own data for analysis to the workshop, but should recognize that a thorough analysis will not be completed at the workshop.   Given the amount of material to be covered, attendees likely would not be able to begin analysis of their own data until Thursday afternoon.

Cost for each of the 1-week workshops is $1,000.   This fee would include all course materials, CD with Program MARK and supporting documentation and examples, and facilities for the workshop, socials, banquet, and morning and afternoon refreshments.

Instructors:
      David R. Anderson
      Kenneth P. Burnham
      Gary C. White

Registration Form:
Fill out the registration form, and mail with payment to Carol Peddicord, Wildlife Management Institute, 1101 14th Street, N. W., Suite 801, Washington, D.C. 20005.

Remember: this workshop is an intermediate-level workshop.  If you have no background in the analysis of marked animal data and further lack a strong statistical background, you will probably not find the workshop useful. More information on Program MARK can be found at  .  If you have questions, contact Gary White, email  .

>Gary
>
>Gary C. White
>Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology
>Colorado State University
>Fort Collins, CO 80523
>(970)491-6678
>gwhite@cnr.colostate.edu
>http://www.cnr.colostate.edu/~gwhite