I am conducting some seed predation research and want a rough estimation of the local abundance of mammals. I have been suggested that scat counting is a relatively easy way to obtain such an approximation.
I have already identified the paper by Birks et al. (ARE SCAT SURVEYS A RELIABLE METHOD FOR ASSESSING DISTRIBUTION AND POPULATION STATUS OF PINE MARTINS) but I was wondering if anyone knew of any studies that used this method?
What about the use of plots to determine the density of scats?
If you are going to go down this route, I'd suggest employing Distance Sampling techniques (Buckland, S.T., Anderson, D.R., Burnham, K.P., Laake, J.L., Borchers, D.L. & Thomas, L.N. (2001) Introduction to Distance Sampling: Estimating Abundance of Biological Populations, Oxford University Press, Oxford.) or occupancy modelling (MacKenzie, D.I., Nichols, J.D., Royle, J.A., Pollock, K.H. & Bailey, L.L. (2006) Occupancy Estimation and Modelling: Inferring Patterns and Dynamics of Species Occurrence., Elsevier, London, U.K.) rather than indices. Those two books highlight just how wrong these indices are.
Dear Thia,
You did not mention about the species of your interest. The sampling method vary according to the nature of the species. I assume seed predator mammals which your are mentioned about could be rodents and dispersing mammals like small carnivores (of which diet composed of considerable amount of fruits) and even ungulates.
For smaller rodents you can try a small trapping survey with proper grid sample area and adequate number of traps. you can use mark recapture protocol for that.
The same sampling protocol with larger sample area and traps can be used to estimate the population of small carnivores.
if you are interested in ungulates you can use indirect pellet counts by collecting additional information such as defecation rate (number of defecation/day) and decay rate of pellets. Either you can use plot or line transect survey depending on the vegetation types.
Thanks and goodluck
Please look also here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2008.01512.x/pdf
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3781605?uid=3738480&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102668808207
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037811270800532X
etc.
As you see. pellet group counts in ungulates is used until today.
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