Hi - I'm new to occupancy modeling, but have been working through the online tutorials for PRESENCE and reading the book by MacKenzie et al. I'm hoping someone might provide some advice regarding which modeling approach to use given my question / data.
A bit of background: We are interested in estimating the number of trees (sites) infested with an introduced pest. We sampled ~500 trees for a predetermined amount of time on 3 occasions and noted whether the pest was present or absent. We returned to all trees with at least one detection, fully sampled the tree and determined abundance of the pest (the pest is sedentary and dispersal happens during a narrow window, so we can safely assume populations are closed between surveys).
My question is: how do we incorporate abundance data into our model? We do not wish to estimate abundance, but rather we want to use abundance & corresponding detection histories to provide an estimate of infestation (occupancy) rate and how abundant the pest has to be before we can reliably detect it. To me, this seems a bit different than the models described in Ch.5 of MacKenzie et al. Or I am I missing something?
Many thanks for your help.