American alligator demographic and harvest data from Georgetown County, South Carolina, 1979-2017

The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is a species of ecological and economic importance in the southeastern United States. Within South Carolina, alligators are subject to private and public harvest programs, as well as nuisance removal. These management activities can have different impacts across alligator size classes that may not be apparent through widely-used monitoring techniques such as nightlight surveys. We synthesized multiple datasets within an integrated population model (IPM) to estimate size class-specific survival and abundance estimates, that would not be estimable through separate, non-integrated modeling frameworks. The IPM framework included a multistate mark-recapture-recovery model that used mark-recapture-recovery data from the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center and growth transition probabilities that were estimated outside of the IPM framework. The IPM also included a state-space count model, which used nightlight survey counts of alligtaors from two survey routes: 1) Great Pee Dee and Waccamaw Rivers; and 2) South Santee Rivers. The IPM modeling framework also used mean clutch size data from the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center and public and private harvest data within the state model. Lastly, we evaluated the effects of capture effort on capture probability, as well as the effects of water temperature and relative water level on count detection probability, and provide all covariate datasets. Our IPM framework determined that size class-specific survival rates were relatively high for all non-hatchling size classes, and abundance trends differed between the two nightlight survey sites.