Abstract
Hair snares have been used in North and Central America for a long time in assessment and monitoring studies of several mammalian species. This method can provide a cheap, suitable, and efficient way to monitor mammals because it combines characteristics that are not present in most alternative techniques. However, despite their usefulness, hair snares are rarely used in other parts of the world. The aim of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of hair snares and three scent lures (cinnamon, catnip, and vanilla) in the detection of felids in one of the largest remnants of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. We performed tests with six captive felid species - Panthera onca (Linnaeus, 1758), Leopardus pardalis (Linnaeus, 1758), L. tigrinus (Schreber, 1775), L. wiedii (Schinz, 1821), Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771), and P. yagouaroundi (É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1803) - to examine their responses to the attractants, and to correlate those with lure efficiency in the field. The field tests were conducted at the Parque Estadual Pico do Marumbi, state of Paraná, Brazil. Hair traps were placed on seven transects. There were equal numbers of traps with each scent lure, for a total of 1,551 trap-days. In captivity, vanilla provided the greatest response, yet no felids were detected in the field with any of the tested lures, although other species were recorded. Based on the sampling of non-target species, and the comparison with similar studies elsewhere, this study points to a possible caveat of this method when rare species or small populations are concerned. Meanwhile, we believe that improved hair snares could provide important results with several species in the location tested and others.
Highlights
Of all 37 recognized wild felid species, eight can be found in Brazil
Multiple studies have evaluated the efficacy of hair-snares with several lures on the Nearctic region (WEAVER et al 2005, BERTRAND et al 2006, MCKELVEY et al 2006, LONG et al 2007, RUELL & CROOKS 2007) and in Central America (HARRISON 1997, DOWNEY et al 2007, CASTRO-ARELLANO et al 2008), but there are no published studies in South America
Catnip is commonly employed in this type of study (HARRISON 1997, MCDANIEL et al 2000, CASTRO-ARELLANO et al 2008, SCHLEXER 2008), and cinnamon was successfully used by Niara Martins to detect pumas, Puma concolor (Linnaeus, 1771), in a cerrado region of the Estação Ecológica do Jataí, Brazil
Summary
Of all 37 recognized wild felid species, eight can be found in Brazil. All of them are placed in the threatened category in regional (BRESSAN et al 2009, BRAGA & VIDOLIN 2010), national (MACHADO et al 2008) or international (IUCN 2011) official lists. The identification of the species can be done through microscopic analysis of the cuticle patterns of the guard hairs or through DNA analysis (WEAVER et al 2005, KENDALL & MCKELVEY 2008) Passive methods such as camera-traps and hair snares can be installed in sites of difficult access, minimizing the possible bias in the area covered, a pitfall of other methods (WASSER et al 2004). The most common snares used for felids consist of a rigid plate covered with short-napped carpet or hook-and-loop fasteners (e.g. VelcroTM), and wires or nails attached to the carpet (WEAVER et al 2005) These plates are used by the felids in their natural cheek-rubbing behavior, during which some hairs are snagged. The main objective of our study was to evaluate the effectiveness of three scent lures to attract six Neotropical felid species to hair snares, in one of the largest Atlantic Forest remnants in South America
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