how to record relatedness in a study population

[Peter Gaze]

Does anyone have a simple system for recording individuals in a marked population, band number, transmitter frequency, with easy reference to an animal's mates, parents, siblings etc?  Am thinking in relation to a study popn of whio but must have many other applications.

[Dave Houston]

I may not have properly graped what you're after, but I think the only way to do it is to use a relational database (e.g. MS Access) and unfortunately this isn't simple.  I have written a couple of such databases and recently adapted the most developed of them (yellow-eyed penguins - 25 years of data and 25k records) to cater for taiko in about a day.

"If" the sort of data you have is marking (band and/or transponder), resightings, deaths and nest success, then it might be that a version of the database could meet your needs.

Am I on the right track?

[Peter Gaze]

Thanks Dave.  Yes - I thought you might have done this.  I want to search for an individual by name or band or tx and be told about its catch history as well as being able to refer to its relatives.   Only talking about a few hundred birds tho.  Anything you can provide will be lovely....and you'll have a few more committed fans for your forum!

[Dave Houston]

There are some screenshots in the attachments below from the yellow-eyed database to give you an idea of what it looks like;

Report - a summary of all data for a particular bird
Data - the types of data used in the tables and the relationships between them
Ancestors - a family tree

(click on the images to enlarge them)

[Peter Gaze]

Most impressed Dave - particularly when you are sposed to be on holiday! Will discuss with others..