Assessing the status of wild felids in a highly-disturbed commercial forest reserve in Borneo and the implications for camera trap survey design
The proliferation of camera-trapping studies has led to a spate of extensions in the known distributions of many wild cat species, not least in Borneo. However, we still do not have a clear picture of the spatial patterns of felid abundance in Southeast Asia, particularly with respect to the large areas of highly-disturbed habitat. An important obstacle to increasing the usefulness of camera trap data is the widespread practice of setting cameras at non-random locations. Non-random deployment interacts with non-random space-use by animals, causing biases in our inferences about relative abunda... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | Journal article |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2013 |
Verlag/Hrsg.: |
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
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Schlagwörter: | Science & Technology / Multidisciplinary Sciences / Science & Technology - Other Topics / LEOPARD NEOFELIS-DIARDI / SMALL CARNIVORES / TROPICAL FOREST / CATOPUMA-BADIA / SABAH / DIVERSITY / CONSERVATION / LOCALITY / DENSITY / MAMMALS / Animals / Borneo / Conservation of Natural Resources / Data Collection / Ecosystem / Forestry / Malaysia / Panthera / Photography / Population Density / General Science & Technology |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-28823488 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/88867 |
The proliferation of camera-trapping studies has led to a spate of extensions in the known distributions of many wild cat species, not least in Borneo. However, we still do not have a clear picture of the spatial patterns of felid abundance in Southeast Asia, particularly with respect to the large areas of highly-disturbed habitat. An important obstacle to increasing the usefulness of camera trap data is the widespread practice of setting cameras at non-random locations. Non-random deployment interacts with non-random space-use by animals, causing biases in our inferences about relative abundance from detection frequencies alone. This may be a particular problem if surveys do not adequately sample the full range of habitat features present in a study region. Using camera-trapping records and incidental sightings from the Kalabakan Forest Reserve, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, we aimed to assess the relative abundance of felid species in highly-disturbed forest, as well as investigate felid space-use and the potential for biases resulting from non-random sampling. Although the area has been intensively logged over three decades, it was found to still retain the full complement of Bornean felids, including the bay cat Pardofelis badia, a poorly known Bornean endemic. Camera-trapping using strictly random locations detected four of the five Bornean felid species and revealed inter- and intra-specific differences in space-use. We compare our results with an extensive dataset of >1,200 felid records from previous camera-trapping studies and show that the relative abundance of the bay cat, in particular, may have previously been underestimated due to the use of non-random survey locations. Further surveys for this species using random locations will be crucial in determining its conservation status. We advocate the more wide-spread use of random survey locations in future camera-trapping surveys in order to increase the robustness and generality of inferences that can be made.