I am working on a PVA for cougars as part of my graduate project. I have come across a number of articles that state the importance of removing sampling error from vital rate (survival and fecundity) variance estimates. Morris and Doak (2002) describe several methods and also provide the Malab code, but I am having trouble figuring out which method to use.
My data set is from 6 years of radio collared cougars in 2 study areas. I have survival rates from males and females in 3 age classes, as well as fecundity rates. Sample sizes are small, particularly when I break survival into annual rates, which is required for most of these methods. I tried using the Kendall and the White method in Matlab, but either the input format I am using is wrong, or the method is not right for my data. I am also interested in removing sampling error from census counts of cougars, but Frekleton et al. (2006) are not too encouraging. Id appreciate any help on this!
