I'm trying to find research on wildlife population estimation of a species in which individuals cannot be differentiated from each other. We have used Mark-recapture to estimate population size, now we're wanting to use other methods to verify our findings.
Being a dense vegetation, camera trapping is proving to be difficult and so is walking transects.
Can you suggest other methods by which population estimation can be done?
Hello Adil; In the old days people used "track boards" to assess presence-absence. In dense vegetation there are likely to be many game trails that offer a reasonable way to place them. You might be well enough informed statistically (I'm not) to be able to cook up a valid way to correlate your mark-recapture data with the track board results. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers
We use camera trapping in agricultural fields. Jest cut a small "window" in front of the CT.
Always speaking to the farmers.
Radiotelemetry can also be used for density estimation.
However, depends also on the species. Medium sized is a little sparse information. Spotlight counts do work well hares, but CT better in foxes...
We used CT in agricultural fields and setasides/game fields to count small game species and meso predators.
In front of the CT we did cut (in accordance with the farmers) a "window", a small clearance of 5x5m.
I recommend to read the several publications/guidances of ENETWILD.
https://enetwild.com/reports-docs/
Hi Adil, you will normally find a few individuals you can identify by a broken horn, a slit in the ear, a broken tail, etc. So, if you use camera traps and, for example, 10 of 1000 photographs show that individual, your total population should be about 100. This method is not too accurate, but it is easy and, most important, quick. If your subject is a species with high fluctuations in population, you will need fresh data and this is a good way to get them.
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