Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!emory!samsung!munnari.oz.au!brolga!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!marlin.jcu.edu.au!zlraa
From: zlraa@marlin.jcu.edu.au (Ross Alford)
Newsgroups: bionet.population-bio
Subject: Re: a program called capture
Message-ID: <1991Feb16.045932.7644@marlin.jcu.edu.au>
Date: 16 Feb 91 04:59:32 GMT
References: <9102150500.AA18832@selway.umt.edu>
Organization: James Cook University of North Queensland
Lines: 39

In article <9102150500.AA18832@selway.umt.edu> bi__djw@SELWAY.UMT.EDU (David J. Worthington) writes:
>
>I am searching for a program called 'capture'.  This software was developed
>at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and is designed to estimate population 
>size from capture-recapture data on closed animal populations.  I am told
>that this program is public domain, but as yet I have not been successful in 
>locating it.  Thus I'm wondering if anyone is familiar with the program, or
>might know where I can find a copy.  This program is, I believe, some 10 years
>old.  If anyone is aware of more current software packages designed for
>population estimation,  I'd appreciate any information you might have.
>
I have never seen Capture, but have a program I've written in Turbo
Pascal which I'd be willing to email to interested parties.  It takes
data from plain ASCII files in the format

date ind_no released

where date is the date in one of about 1,000 possible permutations of
format, ind_no is an individual mark number between 1 and 9999, and
released is an optional field which is 1 if the animal was released
after capture, 0 if it wasn't.  The program calculates Petersen/Lincoln
estimates, Petersen Weighted Mean estimates, Triple Catch, and
Jolly-Seber.  It has been extensively tested and debugged by our active
group of population ecologists here at JCU.  At the moment I don't
recall the maximum number of sampling dates, but it is on the order of
100.  Estimates can be sent to screen, printer, or ASCII data file in a
format suitable to read in via SAS.

I can email uuencoded binaries if you're interested.  I'll have to think
a little about releasing source, but contact me if you're interested in
either.

Ross Alford
zlraa@marlin.jcu.edu.au
-- 
"The first thing to tell yourself is not to panic.  Remember, rather, to
keep a calm head, and to heed these words that have helped other
wizards, in similar situations to your own, throughout the ages: 'When
in doubt, run.'" _The teachings of Ebenezum_ Craig Shaw Gardner