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Context. In metapopulations, colonisation is the result of dispersal from neighbouring occupied patches, typically juveniles dispersing from natal to breeding sites. When occupancy dynamics are dispersal driven, occupancy should refer to the presence of established, breeding populations. The detection of transient individuals at sites that are, by definition, unoccupied (i.e. false positive detections), may result in misleading conclusions about metapopulation dynamics. Until recently, the issue of false positives has been considered negligible and current efforts to account for such error have been

restricted to the context of species misidentification. However, the detection of transient individuals visiting multiple sites

while dispersing …