Program MARK Workshop

Introduction

The 'Program MARKworkshop' will be held in our purpose-built facilities at the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM), University of St Andrews, from 3rd to 7th August 2009. There will be an evening reception to welcome participants on Sunday, 2nd August.

Overview

This introductory-level workshop will provide research biologists and graduate students with the basic 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 closed capture 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 in the near future. Untutored analysis of personal mark-recapture data sets will be possible. Possession of data sets eligible for analysis in MARK is not a requisite (but it is advantageous). Questions and problems stemming from preliminary analysis of a mark-recapture data set will be the focus on the last workshop day. Those without questions stemming from analysis of their own data do not have to attend all of the last day of the workshop.

Format

Format of the workshop will be a combination of lectures and computer lab exercises. The workshop will start on Monday morning, 9:00am, 3rd August, and end Friday 7th August at noon (with time during Friday afternoon to address specific user questions). A get-acquainted social will be held Sunday evening, 2nd August. We expect you to attend the Sunday evening social to become acquainted with the instructors and others taking the workshop. Thus, arrange your travel to arrive in St Andrews by 5:00 pm Sunday, 2nd August.

Attendees should bring their own laptop computers. We will be using a computer lab, so if you do not have your own laptop then please indicate this on the registration form. If bringing your own laptop be sure that you have the administrative privileges to install MARK on the laptop that you bring.

Registration cost for the 1-week workshop is £900.00 GBP for professionals or £720.00 GBP for university students . This fee would include all course materials, pen drive with Program MARK and supporting documentation and examples, and facilities for the workshop, pre-workshop-social and morning and afternoon refreshments. Other costs (including travel and lodging) will be the responsibility of the workshop participants.

Instructors

Primary
Gary C. White
Secondary
Paul F. Doherty

Registration Form

The Registration Form is available for download:

as a word document - REGISTRATION FORM doc

Please complete the registration form, forward with payment to Rhona.

Last year, this workshop filled a month before the deadline, and we expect it to fill rapidly again. Therefore, to reserve your place, be sure to register early. This workshop will be limited to 30 people, so that the instructors will have plenty of time to interact with participants and answer questions.

Location and Travel Information

For location and travel information please follow this link.

Enquiries

For further information, please contact:
Rhona Rodger
Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling
University of St Andrews
The Observatory, Buchanan Gardens
St. Andrews
Scotland KY16 9LZ
Tel:+44 1334 461842
Fax: +44 1334 461800
Email: rhona@mcs.st-and.ac.uk