Designing studies to detect differences in species occupancy: Power analysis under imperfect detection

Abstract

Studies aimed at estimating species site occupancy while accounting for imperfect detection are common in ecology and conservation. Often there is interest in assessing whether occupancy differs between two samples, for example, two points in time, areas or habitats. To ensure that meaningful results are obtained in such studies, attention has to be paid to their design, and power analysis is a useful means to accomplish this. 2.We provide tools for conducting power analysis in studies aimed at detecting occupancy differences under imperfect detection and explore associated design trade-offs. We derive a formula in closed form that conveniently allows determining the sample size required to ..