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Baiting improves wild boar population size estimates by camera trapping

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Abstract

In the last decade, camera trapping has become a widespread technique for wildlife monitoring. Although baits or attractants are commonly used to increase the likelihood of encounter, this practice has been criticised because of the potential biases in the population estimations based on these records obtained by mark-recapture or mark-resight methods, and especially in relative abundance indices (RAI). For two consecutive years, we evaluated the impact of baiting on wild boar (Sus scrofa) population estimates in a protected area of northeast Spain. In particular, we compared the number of boars per independent events (the group size), the estimated population size and RAI between periods with and without baiting. Baiting increased mean group size estimation and the likelihood of an encounter leading to more precise wild boar population estimates. The RAI values both at baited and unbaited campaigns correlated significantly with mark-resight abundance estimates, suggesting that these indices could be used to evaluate the boar population changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Diputació de Barcelona, Àrea de Territori i Sostenibilitat, Parc Natural de Sant Llorenc Del Munt i l’Obac, Barcelona, Spain

    Albert Peris

  2. Research Group on Infertility-Barcelona (GRI-BCN), Departament de Sanitat i d’Anatomia Animals, Facultat de Veterinària, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain

    Francesc Closa-Sebastià & Encarna Casas-Díaz

  3. Wildlife Ecology & Health group (WE&H), and Servei d’Ecopatologia de Fauna Salvatge (SEFaS), Departament de Medicina i Cirurgia Animals, Facultat de Veterinària, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, Spain

    Albert Peris, Ignasi Marco & Emmanuel Serrano

  4. Dipartimento di Scienze Veterinarie, Universitá di Torino, Grugliasco, Torino, Italy

    Emmanuel Serrano

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  1. Albert Peris
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Peris, A., Closa-Sebastià, F., Marco, I. et al. Baiting improves wild boar population size estimates by camera trapping. Mamm Biol 98, 28–35 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2019.07.005

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