daily rainfall as a occasion-specific covariate

[aerodramus]

Hello:

I'm working through nest survival analyses for a tropical bird species. I have 5 years of nest monitoring data, as well as daily rainfall values for every day during that period. I would like to include daily rainfall as a time-varying covariate; and only associate each daily rainfall total with the relevant nest visit date - I guess this would be occasion-specific. Is this possible in say, RMark? - as opposed to feeding all five years of rainfall values into RMark. Any assistance is appreciated.

Thank you,
Nathan

[jlaake]

You are correct that it is an occasion-specific covariate. In RMark it would be added to the design data for any parameter that you you think may be affected by rainfall. In MARK you would add the values into column(s) and the rows specific to the parameters that are affected by rainfall. RMark constructs the design matrix for you with those values.

--jeff