Hello,
I have searched the forum and haven't found an answer to the question I have, so hopefully this isn't a repeat of what someone has already posted.
In a nutshell, I work with a social species of bird. I color band individuals (both parents and young) at nestboxes, and I focal monitor these "family groups" year-round. Often juveniles will remain with their parents for an extended period of time, and frequently these juveniles will set up territories near their father's territory, ultimately creating kin-structured neighborhoods over time. Established breeding pairs have high site fidelity and will nest in the same nestbox (or a nearby nestbox) year after year. I have 7 years of this type of data for over 200 "family groups" and over 1000 individuals.
I hypothesize that individuals within "family groups" have a higher apparent survival than individuals not residing in a family group, and I want to take this into account in my CJS model. I have witnessed relatives sharing food resources and engaging in fewer aggressive interactions with conspecifics (another chapter of my dissertation). However, I have no idea how to code for this in RMark. Obviously from year to year, "family groups" change. For example, in 2013, male and female fledge young from nestbox 1-3. Then in 2014, the same male and female use nestbox 1-4 and their son from the previous year is now occupying nestbox 1-3. In 2015, male is with a new mate in nestbox 1-5, and son is still around using nestbox 1-3. And so on and so forth.
How do I take into account these time-transitioning "family groups?" For other models, I have used "family group" as a random factor, but I know that in RMARK (implemented through Mark), its different. I also know that I eventually am going to run a multistate model for apparent survival taking into account changing social status, but for my CJS model, how do I code this? Not all individuals change "family groups," and most of my individuals disperse and are never seen again.
Hopefully that made sense. Any help would be amazing. I love it that my birds are complicated, but it makes for some rough modeling!
All the best,
Rebekah