Advancing Terrestrial Salamander Population Ecology: The Central Role of Imperfect Detection

Abstract

Abstract Terrestrial salamanders (Plethodontidae) are increasingly cited as important surrogates for monitoring forest ecosystem health and biodiversity. To accurately assess the ecological role of salamanders, total abundance is more relevant than the population subset available for sampling. Therefore, estimating detectability is important for generating unbiased population metrics, as abundance estimates average an order of magnitude greater than surface counts. The past two decades have seen a tremendous increase in analytical methods that account for imperfect detection. Terrestrial salamanders have unique physiological requirements and surface activity patterns that contribute to their inherently low detection levels, and variable terminology makes it difficult to compare detectability parameter values across species, regions, methods, and studies. It is important to use consistent terminology and explicitly state what specific components of detectability are being reported in a study. Availability ...