ArticleScientific reports2020
Identification errors in camera-trap studies result in systematic population overestimation.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
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- Multispecies facial detection for individual identification of wildlife: a case study across ursids.Mammalian biology = Zeitschrift fur Saugetierkunde · 2022Article
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- The value of individual identification in studies of free-living hyenas and aardwolves.Mammalian biology = Zeitschrift fur Saugetierkunde · 2022Review
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- Perspectives on Individual Animal Identification from Biology and Computer Vision.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Review
- Chimpanzee identification and social network construction through an online citizen science platform.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Spatial capture-recapture with random thinning for unidentified encounters.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Spatial variation in population-density of snow leopards in a multiple use landscape in Spiti Valley, Trans-Himalaya.PloS one · 2021Article
- Relative influence of wild prey and livestock abundance on carnivore-caused livestock predation.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- A Camera-Trap Home-Range Analysis of the Indian Leopard (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Article
- Morphological keys for identifying long-tailed gorals (Biodiversity data journal · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reliable assessments of animal abundance are key for successful conservation of endangered species. For elusive animals with individually-unique markings, camera-trap surveys are a benchmark standard for estimating local and global population abundance. Central to the reliability of resulting abundance estimates is the assumption that individuals are accurately identified from photographic captures. To quantify the risk of individual misidentification and its impact on population abundance estimates we performed an experiment under controlled conditions in which 16 captive snow leopards (Panthera uncia) were camera-trapped on 40 occasions and eight observers independently identified individuals and recaptures. Observers misclassified 12.5% of all capture occasions, resulting in systematically inflated population abundance estimates on average by one third (mean ± SD = 35 ± 21%). Our results show that identifying individually-unique individuals from camera-trap photos may not be as reliable as previously believed, implying that elusive and endangered species could be less abundant than current estimates indicate.
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Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.