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19 August 2022 A comparison of capture-mark-recapture and camera-based mark-resight to estimate abundance of Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota)
Alessandro Forti, Piergiovanni Partel, Michel J. Orsingher, Gilberto Volcan, Enrico Dorigatti, Luca Pedrotti, Luca Corlatti
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Abstract

Obtaining reliable estimates of population abundance is of utmost importance for wildlife research and management. To this aim, camera-traps are increasingly used, as this method has the advantage of being noninvasive and allows for continuous monitoring. Camera traps can be used to estimate abundance in combination with traditional capture-recapture techniques, as well as with estimators that do not require marked individuals. Here, we investigated the use of camera-based mark-recapture methods applied to an Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota) population in the Paneveggio-Pale di San Martino Natural Park (eastern Italian Alps). We compared abundance estimates derived from a traditional capture-mark-recapture (CMR) framework and camera trap mark-resight (CTMR) over three consecutive years. CMR models estimated a population size of n = 19 individuals (95% CI = 18-27), n = 15 (14-22) and n = 24 (22-32) in 2019, 2020 and 2021 respectively. CTMR returned an estimated population size of n = 24 (95% CI = 18-30), n = 20 (17-24) and n = 22 (21-24) for the same years. The difference between the estimate of these two methods was significant only in 2020, with CMR returning a lower estimate than CTMR (95% CI = –9.4–0.6). This difference was not significant for 2019 (95% CI = –10.9-0.9) and 2021 (95% CI = –1.8-5.9). Based on our results, the use of CTMR techniques is promising in the estimation of absolute population size of marmots, and the estimator was slightly more precise than CMR. Further studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of CTMR with reduced capture effort.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.
Alessandro Forti, Piergiovanni Partel, Michel J. Orsingher, Gilberto Volcan, Enrico Dorigatti, Luca Pedrotti, and Luca Corlatti "A comparison of capture-mark-recapture and camera-based mark-resight to estimate abundance of Alpine marmot (Marmota marmota)," Journal of Vertebrate Biology 71(22023), 22023.1-11, (19 August 2022). https://doi.org/10.25225/jvb.22023
Received: 7 April 2022; Accepted: 16 June 2022; Published: 19 August 2022
KEYWORDS
Bowden estimator
camera traps
Marmota
population size
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