Live-trapping capture-recapture studies of animal populations with fixed trap locations inevitably have a spatial component: animals close to traps are more likely to be caught than those far away. This is not addressed in conventional closed-population estimates of abundance and without the spatial component, rigorous estimates of density cannot be obtained. We propose new, flexible capture-recapture models that use the capture locations to estimate animal locations and spatially referenced capture probability. The models are likelihood-based and hence allow use of Akaike's information criterion or other likelihood-based methods of model selection. Density is an explicit parameter, and the evaluation of its dependence on spatial or temporal covariates is therefore straightforward. Additional (nonspatial) variation in capture probability may be modeled as in conventional capture-recapture. The method is tested by simulation, using a model in which capture probability depends only on location relative to traps. Point estimators are found to be unbiased and standard error estimators almost unbiased. The method is used to estimate the density of Red-eyed Vireos (Vireo olivaceus) from mist-netting data from the Patuxent Research Refuge, Maryland, U.S.A. Estimates agree well with those from an existing spatially explicit method based on inverse prediction. A variety of additional spatially explicit models are fitted; these include models with temporal stratification, behavioral response, and heterogeneous animal home ranges.

Wild boar (Sus scrofa) populations in urban environments have increased during the last decades. This has led to a new scenario where humans share the space with this recent colonising species inside urban areas. Citizen perception on wild boar presence must be taken into account to assure the most suitable design, application and acceptance of management measures. In order to advance in the knowledge and comprehension of urban wild boar perception by citizens, we conducted 181 surveys to women and men representing all age classes. Our questions were focused on assessing citizen features, experiences and attitudes regarding wild boar presence in the urban area of La Floresta (Sant Cugat del Valles, Barcelona, Spain). We used a recursive partitioning approach through regression trees to explore the relationship between a Wild Boar Perception Score (WBPS) and citizen profile, past and current experiences involving wild boars, contact with wild boars and acceptance of management measures. Our results show that the WBPS is mainly driven by previous incidents suffered by the respondent, independently of citizen profile, current experiences, level of contact and acceptance of management measures. The respondents answered that measures should be taken to minimize wild boar incidents (37%) and to help wild boars to return to their habitat (27%), whereas 16% chose to coexist with wild boars in the current conditions. Culling all the wild boars was not supported at all, even among the citizens with the most negative perception of wild boar. Citizens with positive perception of wild boar presence in urban areas contribute to reinforce the phenomenon by feeding wild boars. Our results verify that socio-demographic variables such as gender, education and public health concern are less important than past experiences to drive citizen perception and explain resident attitudes. Information campaigns on the causes, consequences and effective management options for urban wildlife could help to improve understanding and acceptance of the circumstances and currently non-socially accepted possible solutions. Evaluation of citizen perception and information campaigns should precede wildlife management measures, in order to gain acceptance by residents before being implemented. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier GmbH on behalf of Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Saugetierkunde.

Rapid expansion of human activity has driven well-documented shifts in the spatial distribution of wildlife, but the cumulative effect of human disturbance on the temporal dynamics of animals has not been quantified. We examined anthropogenic effects on mammal diel activity patterns, conducting a meta-analysis of 76 studies of 62 species from six continents. Our global study revealed a strong effect of humans on daily patterns of wildlife activity. Animals increased their nocturnality by an average factor of 1.36 in response to human disturbance. This finding was consistent across continents, habitats, taxa, and human activities. As the global human footprint expands, temporal avoidance of humans may facilitate human-wildlife coexistence. However, such responses can result in marked shifts away from natural patterns of activity, with consequences for fitness, population persistence, community interactions, and evolution.Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

With global changes such as climate change and urbanization, land cover is prone to changing rapidly in cities around the globe. Urban management and planning is challenged with development pressure to house increasing numbers of people. Most up-to date continuous land use and land cover change data are needed to make informed decisions on where to develop new residential areas while ensuring sufficient open and green spaces for a sustainable urban development. Optical remote sensing data provide important information to detect changes in heterogeneous urban landscapes over long time periods in contrast to conventional approaches such as cadastral and construction data. However, data from individual sensors may fail to provide useful images in the required temporal density, which is particularly the case in mid-latitudes due to relatively abundant cloud coverage. Furthermore, the data of a single sensor may be unavailable for an extended period of time or to the public at no cost. In this paper, we present an integrated, standardized approach that aims at combining remote sensing data in a high resolution that are provided by different sensors, are publicly available for a long-term period of more than ten years (2005-2017) and provide a high temporal resolution if combined. This multi-sensor and multi-temporal approach detects urban land cover changes within the highly dynamic city of Leipzig, Germany as a case. Landsat, Sentinel and RapidEye data are combined in a robust and normalized procedure to offset the variation and disturbances of different sensor characteristics. To apply the approach for detecting land cover changes, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is calculated and transferred into a classified NDVI (Classified Vegetation Cover-CVC). Small scale vegetation development in heterogeneous complex areas of a European compact city are highlighted. Results of this procedure show successfully that the presented approach is applicable with divers sensors' combinations for a longer time period and thus, provides an option for urban planning to update their land use and land cover information timely and on a small scale when using publicly available no cost data.

The ecology and predator–prey dynamics of large felids in the tropics have largely been studied in natural systems where wild ungulates constitute the majority of the prey base. However, in tropical countries where communities are primarily agrarian, the high density of domestic animals in human-dominated landscapes can be a potential prey source for large carnivores. We demonstrate almost complete dependence of the Vulnerable leopard Panthera pardus fusca in the Jhalana Reserve Forest in Jaipur, north-west India on domestic animals as prey. We analysed 132 leopard scats collected during the dry season of November 2017–April 2018. Domestic animals comprised the majority of the leopards' prey (89.5% frequency of occurrence): dogs Canis lupus familiaris (44%), cats Felis catus (13%), goats Capra aegagrus hircus (16%) and cattle Bos taurus (15%). Wild species, which occurred in the leopards' diet at a relatively low frequency, were rodents, the hare Lepus nigricollis, small Indian civet Viverricula indica, rhesus macaque Macaca mulatta, northern plains grey langur Semnopithecus entellus and mongoose Herpestes edwardsii. Diet is also a function of availability of potential prey, but no data are available on the density of the leopard's wild prey species in Jhalana Reserve Forest. Nevertheless, our results suggest that abundance of domestic prey around Jhalana Reserve Forest sustains the c. 25 known leopards. We conclude that these leopards, by preying on feral dogs in an urban environment, could be considered as suppliers of a service to the human population amongst whom they thrive, although this potentially exposes the leopards to the canine distemper virus.

During the last two decades, infrared-triggered camera-trapping has been widely used in wildlife and biodiversity research and conservation. In the areas of wildlife ecology research, animal species inventory, biodiversity monitoring and protected area management in China, considerable outputs have been produced by scientific research and conservation applications based on camera-trapping. This technique has been successfully used to detect rare or elusive species, conduct biodiversity inventory, study animal behavior, estimate population parameters, and evaluate the effectiveness of protected area management. Along with the rapid development of modern ecological analysis and modeling tools, camera-trapping will play a more important role in wildlife research at various levels. Meanwhile, along with improvements in techniques, decreasing cost and increasing application interests, camera-trapping will be adopted by more researchers, wildlife managers and protected areas, and can be used for systematic wildlife monitoring using standard protocols. Efforts devoted to its future development and applications should focus on establishing systematically-designed monitoring networks and data-sharing protocols, and developing new analytical approaches and statistical models specifically based on camera-trapping data.

20年来, 红外相机技术在国内外野生动物研究、监测与保护中得到了广泛应用。基于红外相机技术, 我国在野生动物生态学研究、动物行为学研究、稀有物种的探测与记录、动物本底资源调查、生物多样性监测及保护地管理与保护评价等领域取得了众多成果。目前, 数学模型、统计分析方法和新的概念正在促进红外相机技术在野生动物监测研究与保护管理中的发展和推广应用。同时, 随着红外相机技术的成熟、成本降低和应用普及, 这一技术也将会被更多的野生动物研究人员、管理人员和自然保护区管理者所采用, 并成为全国各级保护地和区域生物多样性监测研究的关键技术和方法。今后, 建立并完善系统化的监测网络和数据共享平台、开发新一代的数据分析方法与模型, 将是此项技术进一步发展和应用的主要方向。

The development of camera traps has improved our ability to study Amur tigers (Panthera tigris altaica), Amur leopards (Panthera pardus orientalis) and their prey populations. This research introduces camera trap monitoring methods of Amur tigers, Amur leopards and their prey populations in Chunhua and Madida areas of the Hunchun Nature Reserve, Changbai Mountains, China. A selection of monitoring positions, methods of erecting, parameter settings, and data filtering techniques are presented. Additionally, unique identifiers of Amur tigers and Amur leopards based on body patterns, calculations of relative abundance indexes (RAI), and the establishment of RAI models between the predators and prey are presented. We discuss the applicability of unique identifiers with ipsilateral patterns, the differences between camera trap monitoring and traditional survey methods, and the error of camera trap monitoring. We conclude that predicting densities of Amur tigers and Amur leopards with camera traps and automatic-individual-identifiers still needs improvement. Camera trap densities of one pair per 25 km2 can meet the needs for Amur tigers and leopards within Chunhua and Madida of the Hunchun Nature Reserve, but a separate monitoring project is needed for ungulates prey.

红外相机技术的发展促进了对东北虎(Panthera tigris altaica)、东北豹(Panthera pardus orientalis)及其猎物种群的研究。本研究以珲春保护区春化和马滴达两个区域的监测结果为例, 介绍利用该技术对我国长白山区东北虎、东北豹及其猎物的种群评估方法, 包括监测位点的选择、相机的架设方式及参数设置、数据筛选、东北虎和东北豹体侧花纹个体识别方法、物种相对丰富度的计算以及捕食者与猎物丰富度关系模型的构建。最后就东北虎、东北豹体侧花纹个体识别技术的适用性、红外相机监测与传统调查方法的差异, 相机监测的误差进行了讨论。研究表明, 利用红外相机技术进行密度预测以及东北虎、东北豹个体自动识别技术还需继续完善。1对/25 km²的相机架设密度基本上满足对于珲春保护区春化至马滴达区域虎豹的监测强度要求, 但对于有蹄类则需要另外的监测方案。

The increasing urbanization process is hypothesized to drastically alter (semi-)natural environments with a concomitant major decline in species abundance and diversity. Yet, studies on this effect of urbanization, and the spatial scale at which it acts, are at present inconclusive due to the large heterogeneity in taxonomic groups and spatial scales at which this relationship has been investigated among studies. Comprehensive studies analysing this relationship across multiple animal groups and at multiple spatial scales are rare, hampering the assessment of how biodiversity generally responds to urbanization. We studied aquatic (cladocerans), limno-terrestrial (bdelloid rotifers) and terrestrial (butterflies, ground beetles, ground- and web spiders, macro-moths, orthopterans and snails) invertebrate groups using a hierarchical spatial design, wherein three local-scale (200 m × 200 m) urbanization levels were repeatedly sampled across three landscape-scale (3 km × 3 km) urbanization levels. We tested for local and landscape urbanization effects on abundance and species richness of each group, whereby total richness was partitioned into the average richness of local communities and the richness due to variation among local communities. Abundances of the terrestrial active dispersers declined in response to local urbanization, with reductions up to 85% for butterflies, while passive dispersers did not show any clear trend. Species richness also declined with increasing levels of urbanization, but responses were highly heterogeneous among the different groups with respect to the richness component and the spatial scale at which urbanization impacts richness. Depending on the group, species richness declined due to biotic homogenization and/or local species loss. This resulted in an overall decrease in total richness across groups in urban areas. These results provide strong support to the general negative impact of urbanization on abundance and species richness within habitat patches and highlight the importance of considering multiple spatial scales and taxa to assess the impacts of urbanization on biodiversity.© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

\n\n\nContext\nSmall- and medium-sized native mammals have suffered severe declines in much of northern Australia, including within protected areas such as Kakadu National Park. Several factors have been implicated in these declines but predation, particularly by feral cats (Felis catus), has been identified as potentially the most direct cause of decline for many species.\n\nAims\nWe evaluated how prey frequency changed in cat and dingo scats in Kakadu from the early 1980s to 2013–15, with this period spanning a severe decline in the small- and medium-sized mammal fauna.\n\nMethods\nChi-square test of independence and Fisher’s exact test were used to compare prey frequencies between dingoes and cats, and among years to assess significance of temporal change.\n\nKey results\nSmall-sized native mammals were the prey item occurring at the highest frequency in scats for both dingoes and cats in the 1980s. Prey content in dingo and cat scats differed in the 2010s with macropods predominating in the scats of dingoes, and medium-sized native mammals predominating in cat scats. The frequency of occurrence of small-sized native mammals declined in both dingo and cat scats between the 1980s and 2010 sampling periods, while the frequency of occurrence of medium-sized native mammals remained constant in dingo scats and increased in cat scats.\n\nConclusions\nSmall mammals were a major component of the diets of both dingoes and cats in Kakadu in the 1980s, when small mammals were much more abundant. Despite marked reduction from the 1980s to the 2010s in the capture rates of both small- and medium-sized native mammals, some species continue to persist in the diets of cats and dingoes at disproportionally high frequencies. Both predators continue to exert predatory pressure on mammal populations that have already experienced substantial declines.\n\nImplications\nAlthough predation by feral cats is a major threat to small- and medium-sized native mammals, dingoes may also play an important role in limiting their recovery. Disturbance from fire and grazing by introduced herbivores has been shown to augment predatory impacts of feral cats on native mammals. Predation more generally, not just by feral cats, may be exacerbated by these disturbance processes. Management programs that solely focus on mitigating the impact of feral cats to benefit threatened species may be inadequate in landscapes with other significant disturbance regimes and populations of predators.\n\n

We evaluated how differences between two empirical resistance models for the same geographic area affected predictions of gene flow processes and genetic diversity for the Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida). The two resistance models represented the landscape under low- and high-fragmentation parameters. Under low fragmentation, the landscape had larger but highly concentrated habitat patches, whereas under high fragmentation, the landscape had smaller habitat patches that scattered across a broader area. Overall habitat amount differed little between resistance models. We tested eight scenarios reflecting a factorial design of three factors: resistance model (low vs. high fragmentation), isolation hypothesis (isolation-by-distance, IBD, vs. isolation-by-resistance, IBR), and dispersal limit of species (200 km vs. 300 km). Higher dispersal limit generally had a positive but small influence on genetic diversity. Genetic distance increased with both geographic distance and landscape resistance, but landscape resistance displayed a stronger influence. Connectivity was positively related to genetic diversity under IBR but was less important under IBD. Fragmentation had a strong negative influence on the spatial patterns of genetic diversity and effective population size (Ns). Despite habitats being more concentrated and less widely distributed, the low-fragmentation landscape had greater genetic diversity than the high-fragmentation landscape, suggesting that highly concentrated but larger habitat patches may provide a genetic refuge for the Mexican spotted owl.

Wildlife monitoring is one key indicator used for biodiversity assessment. Therefore, developing wildlife monitoring protocols is an important component of large-scale biodiversity monitoring program such as the Chinese Forest Biodiversity Monitoring Network (CForBio). Since 2011, the CForBio Network launched an initiative to investigate wildlife diversity using camera traps among forest dynamic plots in China. Because of this initiative, there is an urgent need to develop standardized camera trapping protocols. One important premise of camera-trapping protocols is that camera trap data can be used to conduct comparative research among different plots. Here, we propose camera-trapping protocols based on our own experience in using camera traps for wildlife surveys, and on the terrestrial vertebrate (camera trap) protocol implementation manual produced by the TEAM (Tropical Ecology Assessment & Monitoring) Network. We hope that these protocols can serve as the basis for a standardized tool used in wildlife diversity monitoring in forest ecosystems. We also provide recommendations for plot design, data management and long-term monitoring programs for wildlife diversity monitoring.

野生动物多样性是生物多样性监测与保护管理评价的关键指标, 因此对野生动物进行长期监测是中国森林生物多样性监测网络(CForBio)等大尺度生物多样性监测研究计划的一个重要组成部分。2011年以来, CForBio网络陆续在多个森林动态监测样地开展以红外相机来监测野生动物多样性。随着我国野生动物红外相机监测网络的初步形成, 亟待建立和执行基于红外相机技术的统一监测规范。基于3年来在我国森林动态监测样地红外相机监测的进展情况, 以及热带生态评价与监测网络针对陆生脊椎动物(兽类和鸟类)所提出的红外相机监测规范, 本文从监测规范和监测注意事项等方面探讨了我国森林野生动物红外相机监测的现状和未来。

We studied and assessed the minimum population number of Asian elephants (<em>Elephas maximus</em>) in Shangyong Sub-Reserve (SYSR), Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province, China using camera-traps. We set up 27 camera-traps in SYSR from January to April 2016, which ran for a total of 621 camera-trap days and obtained 1944 sample photographs. Within this period individual camera units were active for between 9-52 full days (mean=24). We identified a minimum number of 69 unique individual elephants from photographs (38 adults, 16 sub-adults, 15 calfs) in SYSR. We detected 7 Asian elephants that moved actively across the China-Laos border. The advantages and disadvantages of our camera-trap methodology compared with those of other techniques for individual identification is discussed, and we explore the potential for robust methods for fast, real-time and effective population evaluation in the future. This study strengthened our understanding of Asian elephant status in SYSR and provides scientific evidence to support conservation planning and actions.