Exploiting uncertain ecological fieldwork data with multi-event capture--recapture modelling: an example with bird sex assignment.

1. Sex plays a crucial role in evolutionary life histories. However, the inclusion of sex in demographic analysis may be a challenge in fieldwork, particularly in monomorphic species. Although behavioural data may help us to sex individuals in the field, this kind of data is unlikely to be error free and is usually discarded. 2. Here we propose a multi-event capture-recapture model that enables us to exploit uncertain field observations regarding the sex of individuals based on behavioural or morphological criteria. The multi-event capture-recapture model allows us to account for sex uncertainty not restricting our ability to estimate the parameters of interest. In this case, by adding the confirmed sex of just a few individuals, we greatly improve the efficiency of the optimization algorithm. 3. Using such an approach, we analysed sex differences in demographic parameters (e.g. survival, transience and sex ratio) in a population of Audouin's gulls using observations from long-term fieldwork monitoring (1988-2007). We also assessed the probability of ascertaining sex over time and the probability of error for each field-sexing criterion. 4. We detected no strong effect of sex on either survival or transience probabilities, and both sexes showed a decreasing trend in survival over time and transience probability after recruitment increased with age and over time. The probability of ascertaining sex over time depended on observers' experience. Strikingly, courtship feeding (but not copulation) emerged as the most reliable clue for sexing individuals, which would suggest that Audouin's gulls engage in same-sex sexual behaviour such as same-sex mounting. 5. The present modelling emerged as a reliable method for estimating demographic parameters and state transition parameters in ecological studies in which field observations of sex or other individual states are assigned erroneously and uncertainly. This approach could also be useful for applied ecologists for assessing the reliability of their criteria for assigning sex or other individual covariates in the field, thereby permitting them to optimizing their field ecological protocols.