Noninvasive Sampling of Animal Populations

• Activity Number: 332
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Matthew Schofield* and Richard Barker
• Companies: University of Otago and University of Otago
• Keywords: non-invasive ; capture-recapture ; misidentification

Abstract

For many rare or elusive animal populations, it is difficult or harmful to physically capture individual animals. An increasingly used alternative is to use non-invasive sampling approaches, where animals are identified based on a natural tag that can be observed without encountering the animals. Examples of such tags are DNA from hair of feces, or unique patterns visible from photographs. In this talk we will discuss how many of the identification approaches used of non-invasive studies are far from perfect and require statistical models that describe how identification errors occur. We will also consider modeling approaches that allow for data to be observed in continuous time and space.