Assessing the status of wild felids in a highly-disturbed commercial forest reserve in Borneo and the implications for camera trap survey design
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Wearn, Oliver R
Rowcliffe, J Marcus
Carbone, Chris
Bernard, Henry
Ewers, Robert M
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The proliferation of camera-trapping studies has led to a spate of extensions in the known distributions of many wild cat species, not least in Borneo. However, we still do not have a clear picture of the spatial patterns of felid abundance in Southeast Asia, particularly with respect to the large areas of highly-disturbed habitat. An important obstacle to increasing the usefulness of camera trap data is the widespread practice of setting cameras at non-random locations. Non-random deployment interacts with non-random space-use by animals, causing biases in our inferences about relative abundance from detection frequencies alone. This may be a particular problem if surveys do not adequately sample the full range of habitat features present in a study region. Using camera-trapping records and incidental sightings from the Kalabakan Forest Reserve, Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, we aimed to assess the relative abundance of felid species in highly-disturbed forest, as well as investigate felid space-use and the potential for biases resulting from non-random sampling. Although the area has been intensively logged over three decades, it was found to still retain the full complement of Bornean felids, including the bay cat Pardofelis badia, a poorly known Bornean endemic. Camera-trapping using strictly random locations detected four of the five Bornean felid species and revealed inter- and intra-specific differences in space-use. We compare our results with an extensive dataset of >1,200 felid records from previous camera-trapping studies and show that the relative abundance of the bay cat, in particular, may have previously been underestimated due to the use of non-random survey locations. Further surveys for this species using random locations will be crucial in determining its conservation status. We advocate the more wide-spread use of random survey locations in future camera-trapping surveys in order to increase the robustness and generality of inferences that can be made.
Date Issued
2013-11-04
Date Acceptance
2013-09-13
Citation
PLoS One, 2013, 8 (11), pp.1-9
ISSN
1932-6203
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Start Page
1
End Page
9
Journal / Book Title
PLoS One
Volume
8
Issue
11
Copyright Statement
© 2013 Wearn et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000326503400011&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Science & Technology - Other Topics
LEOPARD NEOFELIS-DIARDI
SMALL CARNIVORES
TROPICAL FOREST
CATOPUMA-BADIA
SABAH
DIVERSITY
CONSERVATION
LOCALITY
DENSITY
MAMMALS
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN e77598
Date Publish Online
2013-11-04