Covariate matrix coding

[not_present]

I am attempting to run a single season, two species model. One of my covariates is "season" but not in the sense of needing to run a multiple season model (hopefully that makes sense). The covariate has three levels, say season 1, season 2, season 3. When I create the covariate matrix, can I just use 1,2, or 3 for the season or does it need to be a binary response? Thanks for any help you can offer. (I am new to occupancy modeling, so type slowly.)

[jhines]

If you're not interested in the components of the change in occupancy (colonization, extinction), then you can use season as a categorical covariate. You'll want to create 3 'survey' covariates, season1, season2, season3, which are zero for the surveys which don't correspond to the covariate, and 1 when they do.

[not_present]

Thank you.