Science topic
Camera Trapping - Science topic
Explore the latest questions and answers in Camera Trapping, and find Camera Trapping experts.
Questions related to Camera Trapping
Hi everyone, do you know of any camera traps that are similar to the Reconyx UltraFire XR6, but that might have a higher response time?
I am working with a lot of timelapse data and I've been switching between Timelapse2 & just using VLC (strictly because it isn't as laggy with going back a few seconds like Timelapse2) to analyze these files, but its a very time consuming process. I was wondering if anyone here has a lot of experience going through timelapse files and tips on how to go through them in a more efficient matter?
The goal of my project is to compare detection rates for a slow moving species with a few different camera trapping designs
Hello colleagues, in the coming months I will be investigating the presence of drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus) in an area where they have not been seen for years (Pico Basilé Natural Park, Bioko, Equatorial Guinea). It is a rainforest, with altitudes of about 1000-2000 meters. Obviously, I have considered line transect surveys, as they have been widely used for estimating abundance of primate populations. However, there are some issues to consider.
1. It is a very steep area, which will prevent me from drawing completely straight transects.
2. I will perhaps not even find the species. Therefore, as it has been done with the species in other areas, indirect evidence such as fecal remains will be sought. I also thought it appropriate to incorporate signs of human activity into the data (cartridges, rubbish,...) as bushmeat hunting is the main cause of biodiversity loss on the island.
3. I will also have trap cameras, which I intended to strategically place in front of fig trees, a key food in the diet of the species.
I am just starting in the field. I have done fieldwork before, but related to other very different taxa in a very different environment. I've been checking the literature but still, I wanted to ask you to recommend me a study that has used similar methods (nonlinear transects), or that has considered fecal remains to assess the presence of a primate species (I don't even want to say density, because I do not know or if we find them). Or maybe some other publication that explains how to propose different sampling methods according to the field conditions, how to calculate the distance between transects, etc. Or any other key issues they deem appropriate to explain to me.
Thank you so much!
After quick research on the web, I've not found anything of my interest. I know nowadays there are many software used to analyse camera-trap data, which are very useful to automatically extrapolate metadata such as date and time, as well as quickly identify the species, number of animals, sex, age and so on. Furthermore, some of them use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to recognize blank images and/or species.
However, most of them work only with photos, likely due to their low memory demands and facility to be processed. At least, this is what I found.
And here comes my question: Do you know any software or R package that works with VIDEOS? I'm looking for something which can automatically help to collect some metadata (date, format, species) instead of filling manually in excel tables.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
Climate change is a prolonged process and does not affect an ecosystem suddenly. Camera traps do not provide any information regarding how precipitation and temperature is fluctuating daily, seasonal, or yearly. In this case, which alternate method could be more effective to monitor the impact of climate change on hibernation in mammals?
But If camera traps could also be used two questions arise here:
what should be the duration of the study? I don't think 3-4 years of monitoring could be enough to get reliable results. Secondly, only camera traps are enough to monitor the animals?
I’m looking for a camera trap that can be set out in the field to function as a camera trap but can simultaneously be programmed to take a video with audio for a set time each day. Does anyone know of a camera trap that has this capability?
Many of us are now using cameratrapping all over the forests, for many purposes. Most of time, we all collect (I guess) an extraordinary amount of informations what are out of our scopes. But what could be usefull for someone somewhere ... Related to my experience in French Guiana, I'm thinking about a Monodelphis making a nest, a 45 min long sequence of 8 bushdogs bathing, grooming, a vampire "running" after a Priodontes, a baby Myrmecophaga digging with his mother .. among many others, all sleeping in computers.
Is there any webplatform that could allow to share those "moments of cryptic life" ? A journal where we could depose such thousands of anecdotal behaviors ?
Maybe something to propose, create ?
Suggestions and comments welcome !
We are studying circadian rhythm in longhorn beetles within the genus Cerambyx, which includes diurnal and nocturnal species, in order to understand the selective forces involved in such a striking evolutionary divergence. We would like to know if those genus including both diurnal and nocturnal species are frequent in insects
For many camera trap studies it is a problem that it is not possible to distinguish individuals, therefore consecutive visits may be the same individual. Either an individual triggers a burst of captures during one visit, or the individual moves consecutively in an out of the camera view during a short time period.
To minimize double counting many studies are using a time gap (hit window), which is the length of time used to group consecutive images/videos together as single detections (given that the data are from the same camera and featuring the same species). This will vary between study designs, for example bait site will cause individuals to stay within the detections zone for a longer period compared to non-baited sites. Further, some species will be more likely to stay at the site than others.
Is there a good procedure to estimate an optimal time gap (hit window) for an existing data set?
Best regards,
Ronny
Hi all,
It's rare to come across papers that calculates both and some states that they are the same.
To avoid pseudo-replication, only images taken 30 min of a previous photo to the same event are considered as independent records. I think 30 minutes seems excessive to avoid pseudo-replication between photographs. I am sure that at times, different individuals (animals) could pass the same camera trap within 30 mins. Can anyone give reasoning a little more?
How can I use R to extract the time interval between visits of different species from camera trap images?
For example, Species A arrives at 07:00 (6 photos, each 1 min apart)
Species B arrives at 07:45 (so a 45 min time interval, or more precisely a 39 min time interval).
I have 10's of thousands of images, and I have used camtrapR to extract the record table, but the deltatime just tells me the time interval between photos of the same species same visit, not inter-species. I want to investigate the effect of species A's presence on species B.
Any advice?
I collectd data by using camera trap on a wild animal. It consisted at 130 photos. I have placed data in Excel with multiple columns of image no., year, month, date, time, temperature, lunar phase, no. of animals, behavior of animal. Now i want to know that how i can analyze the data? and which statistical tools will b used regarding to find out good results.
Almost no information on seed fate has been reported for Asian pheasants (Phasianidae), although they certainly eat fruits and are attracted to fruit baits at camera traps. They are typically the largest birds in forest understories in the tropics and subtropics, unless hunted, so they are potentially significant in seed dispersal if seeds survive gut passage.
Dear all,
I am visualising videos from our great tit-nestboxes (nests were recorded when the chicks were 9-10 days old, hatching date = 1) and I figured out that, sometimes, one of the parents remained inside the nestbox and foraged the chicks, while the other one brought the prey items to the nest (without accessing the nestbox). Due to a ringed bird in a couple, I could confirm that the bird inside the nestbox was the female (as expected). However, I need stronger evidence about it at this stage: does anyone have any paper to suggest about this specific behaviour when chicks are 9-10 days old? Something proved by using PIT tags and cameras, for example?
Thanks a lot in advance!
I'm trying to assess how useful camera trapping would be to compare forest fragments of <4km2. The focal species are carnivores within each fragment with range sizes of no more than 0.5km2.
We have a large camera trap database of multiple carnivores species (from long-term camera trap data). We want to to examine the activity patterns to examine potential temporal aspects of co-occurrence and want to find a solid R-package that can help in that effort.
Hi,
I am interested in estimating feline PV through camera-trapping. However, it is really hard to classify the individuals of my target species found on the records in different age groups. Also, it is rare to find cubs in the camera-trapping records. For these reasons, I would like to know if there is any proxy I can use for these two parameters.
Thank you in advance.
Looking to connect with any research, papers or groups using remotely triggered stereo cameras to create 3 dimensional pictures of wildlife and gather data on cryptic species. Wanting to set up a system similar to the BRUV (baited remote underwater video) but for terrestrial systems, possible using a downward facing camera?
I'm thinking someone out there is probably already doing this?
Cheers,
Jamie
Hello,
I am currently working on a wildlife monitoring project that relies entirely on camera trapping, over different habitats and approximately 9500 square km (not entirely covered). The data is going to be used for both populations estimate and species distribution.
All trapped species are considered, and I am having some issues with species such as Rupicapra rupicapra and Sus scrofa, which enjoy spending more time on a single spot and are not easily individually recognisable. I am merging the events of the these species which are separated by less than 20 minutes, keeping a (conservative) total count of, for example, the individuals during one day.
But I was wondering, is there a rule of thumb to account for possible double counting of the same individuals, or shall I just keep my assessment of 20 minutes as a "statistically good enough" time gap?
Thank you very much and best regards,
Michelle
Does anyone know of current research on livestock predator mitigation strategies (Wolf, Bears, Puma, Dingos, etc …)
I am interested in evalution and techniques with fence, IOT sensors, camera trapping, change in strategies, etc ?
Kind regards
In the past years, I've been doing a lot of camera trapping in rainforests, and there is recurring issue I've been having for a while: daytime IR images.
As the rainforest understory tends to be low-light environment, all camera trap models I've used (Reconyx Hyperfire HC500 and Browning Dark Ops Pro) often switch automatically to the IR flash mode, even during the daytime. Since color is an important attribute for the differentiation of otherwise similar species, I find this problematic. Is anyone else having the same problem, and if so, have you found a way around it?
I was wondering whether it would be possible to change the light threshold at which the camera decides to switch to infrared. Browning addresses this issue on their webpage (https://browningtrailcameras.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009748473-...), but does not provide any solutions.
All insights are welcome :).
Cheers,
Thomas
Hi, I am planning to set up a long term monitoring study using camera traps in Peru. In terms of choosing station location, number of cameras, distance within stations and orientation of the camera, could you offer any advice? Is there any paper you have used in the past as guidance?
My aim is to observe how species assemblages react to wet/dry season and how they will vary in the next years.
Hello,
I am new with occupancy models, and I am working on selecting a model-fitting function for an occupancy model to use for a camera trap study that incorporates abundance and multiple seasons into detection. I hope to use unmarked in R, though I am open to other options. The Royle and Nichols 2003 function (occuRN) seems to be best for using abundance models, while the MacKenzie et al. 2003 (colext) function seems to be used for multi-seasons. My study design is as follows:
- 3 summers of data collection, camera traps deployed in backyards
- Cameras deployed 2X per season in each backyard for 7 days at a time
- 2 cameras in each yard per deployment (at the same time)
I realize that I will have to account for the spatial and temporal autocorrelation, and that they can't be treated as independent samples, but having 2 cameras per deployment may give me a unique advantage to modeling detection. They were always deployed in roughly the same areas of the yard with roughly the same amount of cover and other habitat metrics. Should I be utilizing the multiple season functions, the abundance-informed functions, or another type of function?
Thank you for your assistance!
I just read that AA lithium batteries last longer than Alkaline ones. Thus, I want to check my camera traps ones every six months so as to cut cost. Hence I'm interested to know how long they can last?
Hi all,
I'm just wondering about ebird. Everyone can see this initiative has been very successful gathering together information from different people about the location of bird species. Considering that... why ebird does not include other classes?
I have seen many citizen science projects like emmamal, mammal web, liveandes, etc... that try to follow what ebird does, but I'm not sure if they will be able to have the impact that the first has, well ebird has years working this.
I know it's easier to see birds than other species, but people who work with other classes should have sightings about the species that they work with. So at least we could start gathering that information together, in only ONE project, for both increasing the impact of our research and involving citizens.
so... when ebird will include other classes? why not using same platform for gathering together information about other taxa? By the way I know "naturalist" tries to do that, but I'm not sure if they have the impact of ebird
(I hope a nice discussion will emerge from this)
cheers
nicolas
What would be the best grid size for pres/abs survey of snow leopard using camera trapping in the Himalayas?
We have two large camera trap data sets (tropical and temperate forest), which I would like to use for estimating animal density. Which are the available methods? Strengths and weaknesses? Thanks
We want to study the pollination of a tropical liana species by bats. In order to estimate the visitation rate of bats at the flowers, we would like to use camera traps. Does anyone have experience with using camera traps for trapping small and fast bat species and can recommend a brand (bushnell, cuddleback, Reconyx etc)?
Dear People,
I have data, recorded by a set of 12 cameras in a 5x5km grid, with 1 camera position in each cell for every month (July-December, 4 positions in total/per grid cell). These positions are spatially dependent because of the small grid size and greater homerange size of the target species: Ursus arctos.
My question is, if I can conduct a single season occupancy model for that kind of data, although a requirement seems to be spatially independent sample sites,
or if I should use spatial capture-recapture models (SCR) to analyse habitat selection and spatial behaviour instead?
Another question is: how many trap days should be considered as one repeated visit (occasion- K) for the occupancy model? (3-7?)
Last but not least: does anybody know, where to get daily temperature and precipitation data for Greece :)?
Thank you so much
Humbly seeking methods of analysing the data collected through camera trapping.
I've done some camera trap work as an undergrad and I'm looking for a postgrad project. This looks interesting.
Hi,
we have placed numerous camera traps in an African savanna to monitor wildlife diversity. Although we tried to avoid such situations, in some locations we have quite a lot of grass in the background, triggering the trap constantly. I wonder if there's someone with experience in savanna camera trapping and whether this can be eliminated in some way, or should I just accept the thought of going through millions of pictures of grass :) My main concern is not so much the amount of empty photographs as the problems linked to that - full SD cards and batteries running out, therefore loss of data. Does anyone know whether lowering the sensitivity setting could influence the probablility of capturing some animals?
I will be happy for any thoughts and advices on this, many thanks!
For my project, I want to calculate relative abundance for a range of different species. I am using camera traps (10 sec video, minimum 10 sec interval) to collect data.
THE PROBLEM
I know that usually with camera trapping, a video is independent if the animal is not counted again within 30 minutes.
This works very well with all the solitary animals. But now i have a problem with peccary (collared and white lipped). They are very important for this project. And they are also the only two species that live in (sometimes large) groups.
Now I have times where within 5 minutes I have multiple videos of a few peccary traveling from one side of the frame to the other side, so to me it is clear that this is a large group passing by my trap but based on the 30 minute rule I can only count 4 because that is the maximum of peccaries in one video. So I am worried, like this I will underestimate peccaries.
MY QUESTION
My idea is now, to apply the 30 minute rule but to make an exemption when I can see they are all traveling past and not stopping.
Would you agree with this idea or do you think I should do something different?
Hi, I'm looking for camera traps most suitable for my research in the African savanna ecosystem (in South Africa). I need a trap with white flash, fast trigger speed and preferably long battery life. The higher the image quality the better. The price can be higher if it has all these specifications.. Does anybody have any experience with camera traps in savannas or have any recommendations in general?
Hello everyone,
I am planning to perform a camera trap study to observe wild boar activity patterns in an agricultural landscape. In the attachment you see the forested areas (n=136) within the study region which is where I want to place the cameras following a grid pattern. But area sizes vary between 0.000015 and 440 ha. 68 areas are smaller than 5 ha, 34 smaller than 2 ha.
And here come my questions: How to treat all those small areas? Take them into account or maybe not? Cluster them to a certain total size? Step away from systematic camera trapping and check each small forest patch on the ground regularly for signs of wild boar presence instead? What would then be a suitable minimum area size to use camera traps?
Are there studies that figured out something like a minimum size of a permanent wild boar forest habitat?
Thank you very much in advance for your input!

Do any of you know literature/ evidence for this? In a small scale test with camera traps on carcasses, those of predatory birds were untouched. This is only an anecdotical observation, but I was wondering if there is something more to it, and I couldn't find any studies.
Thanks in advance
Kristijn
I want to compare the detection frequency of various mammal species across 4 surveys. The survey effort ranges from 1-8 months. Should I only use the same amount of survey effort from all surveys for the comparison (i.e. the first 30 days) or if I am using the detection rate/100 trap days, is it acceptable to compare variable survey periods (excluding seasonal changes)?
I´m planning to evaluate abundance of this terrestrial bird by camera trapping. Any help will be very useful.
When calculating the number of independent events and trapping rates for a camera trap study, I used a specific time interval between sequences to determine independence for single individuals of the same species. However, what to do with gregarious species? If in a sequence there is more than 1 individual of the same species (even if I cannot ID them individually), should I count this as 1 event or count the total of events according to the number of individuals?
This is important when calculating trapping rates as they can vary a lot for large groups like Mangabeys and chimpanzees. I have only found 1 paper that mentions specifically this issue: Monroy-Vilchis Octavio et al., Fototrampeo de mamíferos en la Sierra Nanchititla, México: abundancia relativa y patrón de actividad. Rev. biol. Trop., 2011 Mar; 59(1): 373-383.
Usually the type of definition for independent event I find are similar to this one: “Consecutive photographs of the same species at the same site were deemed independent when there was at least 1-h interval between them” without specifying what happens when more than 1 individual is recorded in the same sequence.
I am trying to calculate whether my sampling effort was enough based on a species accumulation curve for a camera-trap study using the software R. Any tips on what script to use or how to organize my data accordingly?
I have gathered around 30 videos/images of unique cats around my campus using camera traps that were placed randomly based on a grid system. Is there a way to turn this data into an estimate of population abundance/density? I've found this article below that lists over 10 different models that can possibly be used for this purpose in a very organized table, however I am not a statistics guy. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
I'm in the early stages of investigating the role of a particular small tree in forest, comparing animal use of it with close by areas (30 to 50 m away in the same forest). Home ranges of the animals far exceeds this this distance. Estimates of animal populations, density, occupancy etc. are peripheral to my study. I'm interested in how many visits each tree gets by different species each day. I don't care which animals visit just how often they interact with my target trees. Struggling to find relevant CT literature and methods.
Hello everyone,
I want to relate environmental variables and human factors to presence data obtain with camera traps, would it work to randomly generate pseudo absences from the available environmental variables?
Thank you for your input
Hi all,
We have many thousand of empty pictures triggered by grass/tree movement in our database and we are simply looking for a way to filter them out.
We don't need software that can identify species or deal with metadata, just something that can detect empty pictures for us. It would safe about 95% of our time...
Thanks!
Stephanie
We are building a specialized wildlife camera to detect various small mammals (focusing on mustelids and dormice). We have included No Glow IR / black flash into the camera in order to minimize the influence on the animals.
We are pretty convinced that the animals mentioned cannot detect our flash emitting light at 920 nanometres, but we cannot find any literature on this subject. Can anybody give us a hint?
Thanks in advance,
Nils
We will start soon a 1 year (at least) camera trap project, where the main target will be mesocarnivores. Unfortunately, some animals like mongooses don´t have spots or truly individual marks and many pictures might be blurred, especially at night.
The idea is to use tags (e.g. hear tags, hair cuts, etc.) that will increase the chance of individual identification, even in worst conditions!
At the same time, we will be conducting box trapping sessions to capture several individuals.
Can someone suggest any easy and durable method to mark animals with the lowest impact possible?
Thanks a lot in advance
Best Regards
Filipe Carvalho
I am studying a threatened species of mammal (Philippine mouse-deer) and capturing and marking them is not advisable because they are prone to trauma and stress. I proposed studying their population by camera trapping but I need to individually recognize them so I wont commit a double counting of individuals. Are there any non-invasive ways on how to estimate their population ? and is there anything I can do to avoid double counting? Thank you.
I have some Cuddleback camera traps and a problem with theft (the Reserve gets a lot of foot traffic). Does anyone have tips on cheaply discouraging thieves? I can't use heavy lockboxes as we have few sturdy trees around.
Thanks!
I am looking for Reconyx HC600-like, infrared and movement triggered camera traps (weather proof) that record video. The idea is to set them up at focal plants to observe/record frugivory events. Has anyone tried particular models with success in the field?
I am trying to get a handle on the thousands of photos I have on our camera traps, and need to include an extension rule for the naming files on ReNamer. Our camera stations are set to take a photo when triggered, and then another two pictures at two second intervals. If an animal lingers in front of the camera the first picture of the new set is taken at the same time as the last photo from the previous set. I would like to make a rule where the photos are all named with the photo number (1 2 or 3) to avoid having file names duplicated.
I am currently working in Cameroon on wildlife assessment with camera-traps, aim to compare faunal biodiversity between 4 different land tenures regimes. The objective is to quantify afterwards diversities indices between 4 sites. After discussions with specialists, I would like to have your opinion. I plan to divide my 44 cameras into 4 grids, corresponding to my 4 land tenures regimes, during 3 months. Cameras will be placed with a distance of 1.4 km between each other (TEAM protocol). I have 11 cameras available for each grid, but I have an important question about one of them: one of our land tenures regimes is composed of 3 distinct community forests of 5,000 hectares each.
We have three possibilities concerning the distribution of cameras for this land tenure: (i) we can use 3-4 cameras in each community forest during 3 months, (ii) we can set up 11 cameras in each community forest one by one and each during 1 month (but it will not be possible to keep the 1.4km distance between cameras, considering the small size of community forests), or (iii) we can put the all 11 cameras in only one community forest during 3 months, but taking maybe then less heterogeneity of landscape patterns.
Would it be better to maximize the sampled zone with a maximum of time and a minimum of cameras, or to reduce the time and put more cameras in each sub-zone? Are 700-800 camera-trap days ( < 1000 camera-trap days) enough to obtain valuable data ?
Thanks a lot!
Hi everyone
We would like to use trail cameras to record the behaviour of small carnivores at night. No need to say that we have a limited budget. The latest entry-level Bushnell model (Essential E2) does not allow to take video-clips longer than 15 s at night with 3 s trigger interval, whereas the Essential allowed up to 1 min with 1 s interval (this is what we call progress...). We are therefore looking for cheap but reliable alternatives. I found good reviews on the Bestguarder DTC-880V/SG009:
N.B. Apparently this model (or a slightly modified version) is also marketed under other brand names such as TEC.BEAN (and maybe XIKEZAN).
I also read some positive feedbacks from buyers on Amazon but noticed that a few people mentioned that the nocturnal video-clips and pics were not necessarily of good quality (i.e. "grainy").
We were wondering whether any of you have used this trail camera and if so, what is your opinion on/assessment of the quality of nocturnal video-clips?
Also, do you have any feedback on the reliability of this brand(s)/model(s)?
Thanks in advance for your precious assistance.
Emmanuel
Hi All,
I'm setting up an experiment following this design: a 10x10m arena divided in 4 quarters (with sticks delimiting all quarters), and would like to record videos of who (kangaroos marked with carved color collars and colour eartags) feed on the area, and for how long...
What do you think would be the best device to get such recordings? I was thinking of using camera traps (potentially one at each corner of the arena) but I'm thinking of the following limitations: battery life (cameras would stay on site for 8 to 16h), quality of the video (that would allow animal identification), and especially trigger/detection sensitivity, as I would need it to record continuously as long as an animal has its nose within the area, even if it doesn't move much...
Any suggestion?
Thanks a lot!
I intend to begin live trapping efforts on a carnivorous lizard that has yet to be consistently trapped. Some efforts have been made to determine bait preferences with live traps, but successful trapping is so low and with no statistical significance.
Has anyone used baited camera traps to determine bait preferences? Would the animal need to consume the bait for it to be considered a success?
I am having difficulty finding ways of getting camera traps set up at canopy level (looking for primates) without tree climbing equipment. Any suggestions?
Hello there,
I am struggling to compare the results of the Shannon Wiener Index between two seasons. I have done the indices between camera trap locations and two seasons (i.e. Location1; Wet = 1.92 vs Dry = 1.66, Location2; Wet = 1.94 vs Dry = 1.88 etc). How can I compare the statistical significance between these two seasons and locations? I am using R albeit a novice... The same question goes for the Simpson's Index. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks
Hi. I have count data from camera traps and want to assess if there is a relationship between capture rate and a covariable. When i standardize counts per number of trap nights, the variable gets continuous. Is it okay to run GLM with Poisson or negative binomial dist even my count data is now continuous? If not, is there a way around this problem?
I wish to use trail cameras in my teaching. The course is about vertebrates and the images from the trail cameras will be a learning resource among others. The main goal is that the students learn species identification.
I would like to get suggestion for trail camera software for photo management and sharing with students.
Most important features:
- Simple structure with camera trap as main folder and with subfolders for each species.
- Accessible for the students online
- Password protected (only viewing).
I sampled a community of terrestrial mammals through camera traps in eight different sites and I would like to calculate functional beta diversity using a relative abundance index of species. I am using analysis suggested by Leprieur et al 2012, but I think that it is not accounting for abundance.
Camera trapping has been used extensively for individually identifiable animals such as Tigers, Leopards etc. But is there any possibility to use camera trap data of non-identifiable animals such as sloth bear can be used for abundance estimation?
I am looking to collaborate with a project that involve topics in my study field as mammal ecology, camera traps, management, invasive species, ecosystem restoration and conservation. I have a few weeks in May 2017 and I am open to collaborate in any country of southeast Asia.
Thank you.
We are recording the behavior of large bats in caves with IR cameras, but this includes a lot of cables and batteries to be able to record them for at least 10 hours. I would like to know if it possible to use camera traps (bushnell, cuddleback, Reconyx etc). What I understand is that the they (some) are able to record for half a minute and reset for a few seconds. Does anybody have experience with using camera traps for continuous video recording?
I am interested in using cellular equipped camera traps to monitor live traps set for carnivores in a Bornean rainforest with partial telephone coverage. My current thoughts are to use cameras with a timelapse function, as opposed to relying on images sent following a triggering event, to help avoid false negatives. Has anyone tried this approach, or does anyone have experience using any of the current cell equipped camera models in rainforest conditions?
My objective is individual recognition in camera-monitoring of nest attendance by Pied Imperial-pigeons. I've tried placing cotton pads with temporary hair colour in the nest. This produced faint marks at best, sometimes no mark. Marks were hard to see, mostly hidden under the sitting bird, quickly lost in rainy weather. I'd really appreciate information on suitable color products. Also keen to get other ideas for mark application without capture. Thanks!

We are thinking on using camera traps to monitor pollinator visits? Does anyone have experience with using them? Do they work well?
Any advisable model at a nice cost?
Many thanks!
Hi all,
I have a dataset from a camera trapping grid that has a low number of sites but spans a long period of time.
The cameras have been in the same sites since 2013, and there are 64 sites over 200 square miles. The number of sites is very low when compared to other camera trapping studies, but we have over 100,000 photos. I am interested in whether this dataset could be used to compare species diversity over time, but most of the camera trapping literature I've read has hundreds of sampling locations. The data has already been collected and it isn't possible to add more sites.
I'm looking for advice on the best statistical approaches to use for a dataset like this. Has anyone worked with a camera trapping dataset that has a very low site sample size and what analytical methods did you use?
Thank you,
any good suggestions for Camera Trap data software that can work on a Mac?
Hi all, I've found that almost all literature relating to camera trap calculated the animals' relative abundance index (RAI) as the formula: RAI=independent event / traping days *100. My question is, why not to use the individuals concluded in each independent event as the numerator here? e.g. if we got 25 independent events concluding 30 sambar individuals of during 40 days , can we calculate the RAI of sambar here like: 30/40*100=75, instead of 25/40*100=62.5 ?
I am carrying out camera trapping surveys to estimate the abundance and space use relationship of the medium sized carnivore in a protected area. I have done vegetation and ground cover surveys around each camera trap point. I have used 2 sq km grid design for deploying camera traps following the closure assumption of 60 days. I divided the study area into 4 blocks and performed camera traps for 15 days in each block containing 50 camera trap grids each. I have estimated the abundance of individual species for the entire study area using Royle-Nichole’s heterogeneity model using the program PRESENCE. Now to correlate with the habitat or ground cover data with the photographic record of these medium sized carnivores, which parameter should I use? May I use the photo captured rate of individual species captured at individual camera trap points with this habitat values or any other parameter should be considered.
I need to purchase some camera traps to be used at high altitude on Mt Kenya where it also rains a lot. The traps will be used to try and photograph owls that are very shy, so I need to ensure they don't flash or emit any other light that would disturb the birds. The photos may be taken during daytime or nighttime, but even during the day the lighting conditions are poor as it is in the forest. I'd prefer to spend in the range of $250/camera. I hear the battery life on most models now is good, ideally the batteries would last at least one month. We have to carry them in backpacks up the mountain, so weight to some extent is also a consideration. I have no experience with camera traps so there may be other important features I'm not considering? Thanks, Darcy
Especially in remote areas? Or is camera trapping sufficient?
Any one with scientific papers or any leading information on carnivore density estimation using camera traps preferably data analysis ? kindly assist thank you.
I'm rather new to using occupancy modelling and PRESENCE, and I've come accross with this situation:
I have 12 sites where we have used camera trapping to analyse mammalian occupancy and measured several variables such as vegetation structure, patch size etc.
For one species detected, number of detections varied from 0 to 3 per site (totalling 15, which I assume should be enough for a total of 18 trapping days). After incorporating varying numbers of covariates my psis for all the sites are one of two (e.g. o.4 or 0.8), even in sites that never detected this species.Several of the AICs between models are also exactly the same, even though my covariate data varies, which I'd think should be about one in a billion chance...
With other species, my AIC between models do vary, but the psis are still very similar if only one covariate is used.
I would appreciate very much if anyone could give any indication as of why this happens.
Thank you already in advance!
regards,
Nina