2-species occupancy "ERROR-- ' ' found in encounter history"

[gerygone]

Hi forum,

I'm trying to fit the Robust Design 2 Species Gamma/Epsilon Conditional Occupancy Estimation model to my data. However I seem to have a problem in my input file that I cannot figure out. After creating the DBF file, I attempt to run the model and get the following error messages:

The character ' ' was found in the encounter history.
ERROR -- Encounter history must consist of only these characters: '1.0'

It seems like MARK is reading space characters in my input file. However there aren't any spaces in my input file. I can run the input file for the Robust design Huggins p and c model, suggesting that there's something unique about the 2-species model that I've missed. Is this a common error? Does anyone know what causes it?

Here's a sample of my data. The columns are: /*location*/, encounter history of the two species, frequency of observation, a covariate for patch area.

/*SW40*/ 1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 1 1138;
/*SW42*/ 1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 1 380;
/*SW50*/ 1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 1 2878;
/*SW70*/ 1010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010 1 7178;

Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!