INSTITUTE FOR BIRD POPULATIONS / NBII BIRD CONSERVATION NODE
SURVIVORSHIP ESTIMATES

¹  Defined as the probability of an adult bird surviving to and returning in a particular year (breeding season) to the area where it was present in the previous year (breeding season).
²  Defined as the conditional probability of recapturing an adult bird at least once in a particular year (breeding season), given that it did survive and return to the area where it was present in the previous year (breeding season).
³  The estimated proportion of residents among those newly-banded adults that were not recaptured seven or more days later during their first year of capture.
⁴  Using the computer program TMSURVIV (Hines, J.E., W.L. Kendall, and J.D. Nichols. 2003. On the use of the robust design with transient capture-recapture models. Auk 120:1151-1158), a modification of SURVIV (White, G.C. 1983. Numerical estimation of survival rates from band recovery and biotelemetry data. Jr. Wildlife Management 47:716-728) to accommodate transient models.
⁵  These models, developed by Pradel et al., 1997 (Pradel, R., J. Hines, J.-D. Lebreton, and J.D. Nichols. 1997. Capture-recapture survival models taking account of transients. Biometrics 53:60-72), modified in Nott and DeSante 2002 (Nott, M.P., and D.F. DeSante. 2002. Demographic monitoring and the identification of transients in mark-recapture models. In Scott, J.M., P.J. Heglund, M.L. Morrison, et. al. (eds.), Predicting Species Occurrences: Issues of Scale and Accuracy. Island Press, New York), and fully formulated in Hines et al. 2003 (see above) include both between- and within-year information on transients and permit the estimation of three parameters: survival probability (Φ), recapture probability (p), and proportion of transients among those newly-banded adults that were not recaptured seven or more days later during their first year of capture (τ). In the fully time-constant model, each of these three parameters is constrained to be constant over all years.
⁶  The amount of statistical support for time-dependence in survival probability (Φ_t), recapture probability (p_t), or proportion of residents among those newly-banded adults that were not recaptured seven or more days later during their first year of capture (τ_t) is determined by summing the QAIC_C weights (w_i; Burnham, K.P., and D.R. Anderson. 1998. Model selection and inference: a practical information theoretic approach. Springer-Verlag, New York) for all models in which each of those parameters is allowed to vary with time (annually). Despite support for time-dependence in these parameters for some species in some regions, all parameter estimates presented are from the fully time-constant model.
⁷  Selected models are those for which Akaike's Information Criterion (QAIC_C), modified for small sample sizes and overdispersion of data, is within 2.0 QAIC_C units of the lowest QAIC_C.
⁸  Species included are those for which (a) an average of at least 2.5 individual adult birds were captured per year from all stations pooled over the twelve years 1992-2003 (30 year-unique records); (b) at least two returns were recorded during the twelve years from all stations pooled; and (c) survival and recapture probabilities were neither 1.000 nor 0.000. Data for any given species were only included from stations where the species was a regular or usual summer resident and breeder (i.e., attempted to breed during all or more than half of the years, respectively, that the station was operated).
⁹  Region codes identify the MAPS Region in which the station is located. Data from stations in the Alaska Region (AK) and the Boreal & Arctic Canada Region (B&AC) were pooled into a single super-region, Alaska and Boreal & Arctic Canada Regions (AK/B&AC) for survivorship analyses. The region codes are: AK/B&AC = Alaska and Boreal & Arctic Canada Regions, NW = Northwest Region, SW = Southwest Region, NC = North-central Region, SC = South-central Region, NE = Northeast Region, SE = Southeast Region. See the NBII MAPS Home Page for a map of the MAPS Regions.