Estimating population size in the presence of temporary migration using a joint analysis of telemetry and capture-recapture data

Abstract

Temporary migration - where individuals can leave and re-enter a sampled population - is a feature of many capture-mark-recapture (CMR) studies of mobile populations which, if unaccounted for, can lead to biased estimates of population capture probabilities and consequently biased estimates of population abundance. We present a method for incorporating radiotelemetry data within a CMR study to eliminate bias due to temporary migration using a Bayesian state-space model. Our results indicate that using a relatively small number of telemetry tags, it is possible to greatly reduce bias in estimates of capture probabilities using telemetry data to model transition probabilities in and out of the..