RMark - a new way to run MARK

[jlaake]

Over the past few years I have developed an interface in R (a public domain stats package) for MARK that enables developing PIMS/design matrices with formula rather than manually creating them with the MARK interface. When it was still in its infancy I sent a message to this list server offering the code to anyone that wanted it.

As promised at the Calgary Wildlife Society meetings, I have developed it into an R library with a complete set of documentation and it is now posted on the web at http://nmml.afsc.noaa.gov/Software/marc/marc.stm You can download both the library and the source for the library and use as you see fit. For those of you that like the convenience provided with formula notation in MSurge, this gives the same capabilities to MARK. I offer the following cautions.

1) You need to know a rudimentary amount of R and the more you know the better off you are,

2) It is a scripting language and not gui, so point and clickers don't bother,

3) it only handles about 2/3 of the models in MARK but they are the most often used models,

4) if you have a single simple analysis that you are doing in MARK stick with the MARK interface; however, if you do many analyses and they can get relatively complex you may want to consider using this library.

Further details about the library can be found at the website. I have been working with a number of individuals with their data sets and this has led to various improvements/additions to the software. While I'll try to be responsive to any questions I have a limited amount of time to do so. If you decide to use it, please read the documentation closely and try the examples. If you get stuck post a message to this list (if that is ok with the administrators) and I'll try to work with you on it.