Is gamma prime in the RD already an immigration estimate?

[thiemo]

I want to get emigration and immigration estimates of a population, using the Robust Design. As far as I understood from reading the Robust Design Chapter in the MARK Book, gamma prime is the probability that an animal is staying outside the study area whereas 1-gamma prime is the probability that an animal is entering the study area .

But now I'm a little bit confused about whether the Immigration Parameter (gamma prime) in the Parameter Index Matrix of the Robust Design is just the estimate of gamma prime or whether it is already the derived immigration estimate (1-gamma prime).

Thanks for any help in advance

thiemo

[cooch]

...just the estimate of gamma prime or whether it is already the derived immigration estimate (1-gamma prime)?

The former (for the classic RD) , although you can reconfigure the problem as a MS problem (as Bill explains in the chapter), which then lets you specify which transition is actually estimated.

However, it is perhaps useful to point out that it doesn't really matter much. If MARK gives you gamma', and you want 1-gamma', simply output estimates to a spreadsheet, and calculate the complement to gamma' there. The SE/variance won't change. Probably take you all f 30 seconds. Definitely faster than recasting everything as a MS problem.