Journal article
Cost-efficient effort allocation for camera-trap occupancy surveys of mammals
N Gálvez, G Guillera-Arroita, BJT Morgan, ZG Davies
Biological Conservation | ELSEVIER SCI LTD | Published : 2016
Abstract
Camera-traps are increasingly used to survey threatened mammal species and are an important tool for estimating habitat occupancy. To date, cost-efficient occupancy survey effort allocation studies have focused on trade-offs between number of sample units (SUs) and sampling occasions, with simplistic accounts of associated costs which do not reflect camera-trap survey realities. Here we examine camera-trap survey costs as a function of the number of SUs, survey duration and camera-traps per SU, linking costs to precision in occupancy estimation. We evaluate survey effort trade-offs for hypothetical species representing different levels of occupancy (ψ) and detection (p) probability to identi..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by Chilean Ministry of the Environment
Awarded by Australian Research Council
Funding Acknowledgements
We thank the Chilean Ministry of the Environment (FPA 9-I-009-12), Robertson Foundation and Recanati-Kaplan Foundation for financial assistance. We are grateful to D.W. Macdonald, M. Fleutchz, E. Schuttler, A. Dittborn, J. Laker, C. Bonacic, G. Valdivieso, N. Follador, D. Bormpoudakis, T. Galvez and C. Rios for their support and assistance, the researchers who commented on the pilot version of the questionnaire for their feedback, and all the survey respondents for their time and the information provided. NG received a postgraduate scholarship from the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT-Becas Chile). GGA is the recipient of a Discovery Early Career Research Award from the Australian Research Council (project DE160100904).