Long-time listener, first-time caller...er poster.
I've been having a heck of a time figuring out a couple of questions that are probably straightforward. I'm hoping that asking here may be better than hours of my poor googling skills.
I'm running n-mixture models for single-season point count data (149 sites x 3 visits). I'm wondering:
1. What is the minimum number of detections to include a species for a model or a straightforward way to determine it?
2. Should I standardize (z-score) covariates that don't have normal distributions? (i.e. temp, Beaufort wind, % of habitat type)?
Any help on this would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Mike