Automatic generation of multistate capture‐recapture models

Nowadays multistate capture-recapture models are used extensively in biological studies. They feature movement parameters possibly associated with the quality of sites; they also allow a combination of different sources of information to improve the stability and the accuracy of the estimates. Model refinements potentially yield more precise information on biological status. The integration of extensive biological information in the model increases its complexity, however. Thus without an appropriate tool, model building and selection may be time consuming. In this paper, the author describes a tool called GEMACO dedicated to the automatic generation of design matrices for multistate models by means of a programming language. This symbolic and flexible tool avoids tedious matrix manipulations. It is well suited for the description of complex structures and has been implemented in a generic multistate program called M-SURGE freely available at http://www.cefe.cnrs.fr/BIOM/logiciels.htm Ge′ne′ration automatique de modeles multi-e′tats en capture-recapture De nos jours, les modeles de capture-recapture multi-etats sont largement utilises dans les etudes biologiques. Ils permettent d'associer les mouvements des animaux a la qualite des sites geographiques; ils autorisent aussi l'integration de differentes sources d'information susceptibles d'ameliorer la stabilite et la precision des resultats. Le raffinement des modeles peut fournir des informations plus precises concernant la biologie des individus. Cependant, la complexite des modeles augmente avec l'integration d'information biologique supplementaire. Sans un outil approprie, la construction et la selection de modeles peut donc s'averer chronophage. Dans cet article, l'auteur decrit un outil appele GEMACO pour la generation automatique de matrices de contraintes pour les modeles multi-etats a l'aide d'un langage de programmation. Cet outil symbolique flexible permet d'eviter de fastidieuses manipulations matricielles. Il est bien adapte a la description de modeles complexes et est d'ores et deja implante dans un gratuiciel appele M-SURGE disponible a http://www.cefe.cnrs.fr/BIOM/logiciels.htm.

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