| | |
Summary: Note: This is a semi-final version of the paper cited below. There are additions to the
tables and an appendix that did not appear in the final paper, but otherwise the
text is close to that published. The Tables are gathered at the end of the paper.
A general methodology for the analysis of capture-recapture
experiments in open populations
Carl James Schwarz
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Simon Fraser University,
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada
and
A. Neil Arnason
Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba,
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada
SUMMARY
We trace the development of a likelihood function representation for the open-population
capture-recapture (Jolly-Seber) experiment. We find that the modelling of the birth
process in the general model is not consistent with the reduced death-only model and that
all formulations to date lead to difficulties in imposing constraints upon the parameters of
the birth process. We propose a generalisation to the usual Jolly-Seber representation that
models births using a multinomial distribution from a super-population. We show how
this leads to simplifications in the numerical optimization of the likelihood and how
|
