Introductory Program Mark workshop, January, LSU

[Melanie Colón]

Initial Announcement

Introductory MARK Workshop

January 12-15

Louisiana State University

contact: Bret Collier: bret@lsu.edu

This introductory-level MARK workshop will provide research biologists and graduate students with the basic background to understand the analyses performed by Program MARK and the familiarity with the program to perform these analyses. Workshop topics during the first 1.5 days will include the basics of parameter estimation, model selection with Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), and the binomial and multinomial distributions. For the rest of the workshop we will cover specific applications, including Cormack-Jolly-Seber (CJS), band (tag or ring) recovery, multi-state, and known fate models. Additional models (closed captures, robust designs, occupancy) will be described and outlined so that participants will understand the benefits of these models.

The clientele for this workshop are biologists and graduate students that have some or limited prior experience with Program MARK and will need to estimate abundance or vital rates from mark-recapture data. Possession of data sets appropriate for analysis in MARK is not a requisite for the workshop (but it is advantageous). We will provide time for questions and problems stemming from preliminary analysis of participants mark-recapture data sets.

Format of the workshop will be a combination of lectures and computer lab exercises. The workshop will start at 8:00 am 12 January and end Thursday 15 January at noon (with time during Thursday afternoon to address specific user questions).

Attendees should bring their own notebook computers with a Window's operating system as MARK is Window's based. If bringing your own notebook be sure that you have the administrative privileges to install MARK on the notebook that you bring (meaning if you are using a University/State/Federal computer, make sure you can install programs 'at will' on it, if you don't understand check with your IT person).

Registration cost for the workshop is $500 (students) and $650 (professionals). This fee includes all course materials, facilities for the workshop, and morning and afternoon refreshments, the pre-workshop dinner and a Cajun cookout on Wednesday night. Other costs (including travel, lodging, and meals) will be the responsibility of the workshop participants.

This workshop will be limited to 25-30 participants.

Instructors:

Primary: Evan Cooch

Secondary: Bret Collier

Registration Form: Will be set up online by 1 November and I will send a update out to all interested folks who contact me (bret@lsu.edu). I will also post it to http://www.phidot.org/software/mark/ under the workshop board.

Any questions please feel free to shoot me a email (bret@lsu.edu)