Conditional methodology for individual case history data

Key ecological studies involve the regular censusing of populations of wild animals, resulting in individual case history data which record when marked individuals are seen alive and/or found dead. We show how current conditional methods of analysing case history data may be biased. We then show how a correction can be applied, making use of results from a mark-recovery-recapture analysis. This allows a simple investigation of the effect of time-varying individual covariates such as weight that often contain missing values. The work is motivated and illustrated by the study of Soay sheep in the St Kilda archipelago. Copyright 2004 Royal Statistical Society.