I have 9 years of livetrapping data on black bears (1998-2006) and, more recently, 4 years of hair-trapping data (7 trapping sessions/yr, 2004-2007) that overlaps the last 3 years of the livetrapping data. I also have telemetry data from the 1998-2006 that I have used to estimate female survival rates and there are a number of other known mortalities of marked but non-radiocollared bears (harvest, road kill). I want to use robust design to estimate N, lambda, etc. from the hair data but would like to combine that somehow with the livetrapping data to improve my estimates. We do not have genotypes on the live-trapped bears so I cannot match their capture histories with the genetic samples. Would it make sense to use the estimates of S, N, lambda, for 2004-2006 as fixed parameters in the robust design or is there a more elegant way to combine these mixed data types? Thanks for any suggestions!
Joe Clark