Estimating survival and abundance in a bottlenose dolphin population taking into account transience and temporary emigration.

The article presents a study which analyzes the survival and abundance of bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus with the use of a photo-identification data gathered from 1999-2004 on the two islands of Azores archipelago. It states that capture-recapture models are developed to increase the knowledge of demographic parameters and to address the problems related to sampling open populations of diversified animals. It mentions the use of open models and Pollock's robust design to approximate population size, survival possibility and the rates of emigration. Results show that adult survival is higher than the sub-adults with higher possibility of emigration.