Group heterogeneity in the Jolly–Seber-Tag-Loss model

Abstract

Mark–recapture experiments involve capturing individuals from populations of interest, marking and releasing them at an initial sample time, and recapturing individuals from the same populations on subsequent occasions. The Jolly–Seber model is widely used in open-population models since it can estimate important parameters such as population size, recruitment, and survival. However, one of the Jolly–Seber model assumptions that can be easily violated is that of no tag loss. Cowen and Schwarz [L. Cowen, C.J. Schwarz, The Jolly–Seber model with tag loss, Biometrics 62 (2006) 677–705] developed the Jolly–Seber-Tag-Loss (JSTL) model to avoid this violation; this model was extended to deal with group heterogeneity by Gonzalez and Cowen [S. Gonzalez, L. Cowen, The Jolly–Seber-tag-loss model with group heterogeneity, The Arbutus Review 1 (2010) 30–42]. In this paper, we studied the group heterogeneous JSTL (GJSTL) model through simulations and found that as sample size and fraction of double tagged individuals increased, bias of parameter estimates is reduced and precision increased. We applied this model to a study of rock lobsters Jasus edwardsii in Tasmania, Australia.