This award will support collaborative research between Profs. David Anderson, Kenneth Burnham and Stephen Buckland of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and Dr. Jean-Dominique Lebreton of the Section of Ecological Systems Studies of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Montpellier, France, on the statistics of animal population studies. The objectives of this work are to produce a unified theory for studies of animal populations; to produce generalized analysis software to allow parameters affecting animal populations to be functionally related to each other, and to verify this work by analysis of some large data sets. A unified approach will be brought to the statistical methods underlying open-population capture-recapture studies, thus facilitating comprehensive analysis of large sets of data. This approach is based upon the viewing of population study methods as primarily studies of cohort survival processes, and consequent focus on survival rate, rather than population size. New approaches to experimental design and data analysis will be developed on this basis. The French collaborators have acquired considerable important data on animal populations in Europe, which will be correlated with similar data available for the U.S. Comprehensive computer software will be developed by both groups and applied to the available data sets. This research could have important implications in the study and management of wild animal populations.
