I have a question about the CloseTest software. I will try to be as clear as possible
I read the manual and I understood that my input file should be a capture history matrix like the one that I will use for the population estimation in program MARK (with the number of columns equal to the number of capture occasions).
Because it is my first time with this kind of analysis I am practicing using data that have already been analysed by another person. For the analysis with CloseTest he used a matrix in which every row was a survey. In other words he did not pool the different days of "trapping" into capture occasion (so he had something like 20 rows instead of 4), while he did it for the population estimation with program MARK (in which he had just 4 rows corresponding to each capture occasion).
My question is: is that correct? If it is correct, why using that kind of matrix?
So far I have not been able to reach this person to ask directly to him, so I would be very grateful to anybody who has an idea about this problem.
Thanks,
Nina Santostasi