Hi all,
My capture-recapture data consists of 25 sampling occasions (monthly intervals) across 5 strata. I am fitting a multistate mark-recapture model in RMark that estimates p as a function of season*year and S as a function of season, where season was defined in the design data as intervals 1,2,3 for 'Fall', 4,5,6 for 'Winter', etc.
My question has to do with the p and S parameter being confounded (jointly estimated) in the final interval. I would like to fix/constrain p in the final interval so that the independent S value will be output. I am a little confused though by the fact that the input data is across 25 monthly encounter occasions, but I am modeling p and S with season, which is an aggregate of 3 monthly time intervals.
My question is, if I have a model p(~season+stratum) S(~season+L+stratum) Psi(-1+stratum:tostratum), is the last interval (time=25) or the last season (season=4) confounded?
Thanks in advance for the help,