Abstract
Population surveying and monitoring are important for identifying conservation needs and tracking trends in populations, communities, and ecosystems over time and laying the groundwork for conservation management and policy decisions. If species or populations go undetected because of inadequate effort or sampling design, protection and management cannot be properly provided. Due to the widespread loss of populations, the Eastern Massasauga (a rattlesnake) was recently listed as a federally threatened species in the United States; it is also listed as threatened in Canada. Given its current conservation status, there is considerable interest at state and federal levels in determining how to best survey for Eastern Massasaugas to aid in management decisions. Using a 16-year dataset, we examined the relationships among environmental, temporal, area, management, and search effort factors on the detection probability of Eastern Massasaugas. We found that four abiotic parameters (solar irradiance, shaded air temperature, three-day maximum air temperature, and humidity) and three search parameters (effort per researcher, search area, and search time of day) influenced detection of Eastern Massasaugas. As the current biodiversity crisis continues, the cost-effective use of resources and scientific expertise will continue to increase in importance. We hope our results stimulate similar analyses in other taxa, which will be critical for designing and implementing regional survey and monitoring programs.
Highlights
Surveying and monitoring are important for tracking temporal trends in populations, communities, and ecosystems, and they lay the groundwork for conservation management and policy decisions [1]
The Eastern Massasauga is listed as endangered or threatened in every state it occurs except Michigan, where it is a species of special concern [30]
182 surveys which were missing some covariate data. Many of these removed surveys were from the first few years of the study when we were iteratively improving our search design and, added or removed variables
Summary
Surveying and monitoring are important for tracking temporal trends in populations, communities, and ecosystems, and they lay the groundwork for conservation management and policy decisions [1]. Surveying for rare, imperiled, and/or cryptic species can be a challenging task [2,3] because a large amount of effort may be required to determine presence/absence at a single location, let alone across a species’ range [4]. If inadequate sampling design or effort result in false negatives, populations may not receive the protection and management needed to persist [4,5]. Determining the appropriate design and effort required to evaluate status and trends of imperiled and cryptic species is a vital first step for surveying and monitoring programs [6,7]. The number of reptiles on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List doubled, Diversity 2020, 12, 177; doi:10.3390/d12050177 www.mdpi.com/journal/diversity
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