Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, 248001, India.
Sci Rep. 2021 Nov 29;11(1):23050. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-02459-w.
Information from camera traps is used for inferences on species presence, richness, abundance, demography, and activity. Camera trap placement design is likely to influence these parameter estimates. Herein we simultaneously generate and compare estimates obtained from camera traps (a) placed to optimize large carnivore captures and (b) random placement, to infer accuracy and biases for parameter estimates. Both setups recorded 25 species when same number of trail and random cameras (n = 31) were compared. However, species accumulation rate was faster with trail cameras. Relative abundance indices (RAI) from random cameras surrogated abundance estimated from capture-mark-recapture and distance sampling, while RAI were biased higher for carnivores from trail cameras. Group size of wild-ungulates obtained from both camera setups were comparable. Random cameras detected nocturnal activities of wild ungulates in contrast to mostly diurnal activities observed from trail cameras. Our results show that trail and random camera setup give similar estimates of species richness and group size, but differ for estimates of relative abundance and activity patterns. Therefore, inferences made from each of these camera trap designs on the above parameters need to be viewed within this context.
从相机陷阱中获取的信息可用于推断物种的存在、丰富度、丰度、种群动态和活动。相机陷阱的布置设计可能会影响这些参数估计。在这里，我们同时生成和比较了（a）为优化大型食肉动物捕捉而设置和（b）随机放置的相机陷阱获得的估计值，以推断参数估计的准确性和偏差。当比较相同数量的小径和随机相机（n=31）时，两种设置都记录了 25 个物种。然而，小径相机的物种积累率更快。随机相机的相对丰度指数（RAI）可以替代捕获-标记-再捕获和距离抽样估计的丰度，而小径相机的 RAI 对食肉动物偏高。从小径和随机相机设置中获得的野生有蹄类动物的群体大小是可比的。与主要从小径相机观察到的日间活动相比，随机相机检测到了野生有蹄类动物的夜间活动。我们的结果表明，小径和随机相机设置可以对物种丰富度和群体大小进行相似的估计，但对相对丰度和活动模式的估计则不同。因此，需要在这种背景下看待从这些相机陷阱设计中的每一种设计对上述参数进行的推断。
