Survival analysis of VHF tracked birds

[Joe]

Hi
I am new to MARK, I went through Mark Book on this website, but I still not confident on which analysis to do.

I want to analyze data from VHF tracked individuals, to compare survival rates at different release sites, and to measure the effect of some covariate on the survival ex (sex and age).
I have 3 study sites where different number of VHF tracked birds are released in each site.

SiteYear Month Number of tracked individuals
A 2007 Feb 60
2008 Feb 40
Jul 13
2009 Jul 10
B 2007 0
2008 Jul 15
2009 Feb 10
C 2007
2008 Feb 20
2009




Tracked individuals were monitored every week (few weeks were missed).
Not all individuals were detected each monitoring week.

What is the best model to compare survival between sites, years, months, and other individual covariates?

Thanks,

[bacollier]

Hi
I am new to MARK, I went through Mark Book on this website, but I still not confident on which analysis to do.
I want to analyze data from VHF tracked individuals, to compare survival rates at different release sites, and to measure the effect of some covariate on the survival ex (sex and age).
I have 3 study sites where different number of VHF tracked birds are released in each site.

SiteYear Month Number of tracked individuals
A 2007 Feb 60
2008 Feb 40
Jul 13
2009 Jul 10
B 2007 0
2008 Jul 15
2009 Feb 10
C 2007
2008 Feb 20
2009




Tracked individuals were monitored every week (few weeks were missed).
Not all individuals were detected each monitoring week.

You should probably focus your reading on chapters 4,6 ,7 and spend lots of time reading chapter 16

What is the best model to compare survival between sites, years, months, and other individual covariates?

By 'model' I assume you mean approach? If you have VHF data then you likely want a known fate analysis or a known fate/joint live dead encounters (both of which you will find in chapter 16).

If by 'model' you mean, how to I create a candidate model set that compares/contrasts between competing models, well, then you need to read Chapters 1-7 again, maybe spend some time in the literature on known fate analysis, and have a good look at the examples in the help files (BLACKDUCK comes to mind as it is similar to what you are interested in).

\bret