Improving aquatic warbler population assessments by accounting for imperfect detection.

ABSTRACT: Monitoring programs designed to assess changes in population size over time need to account for imperfect detection and provide estimates of precision around annual abundance estimates. Especially for species dependent on conservation management, robust monitoring is essential to evaluate the effectiveness of management. Many bird species of temperate grasslands depend on specific conservation management to maintain suitable breeding habitat. One such species is the Aquatic Warbler (Acrocephalus paludicola), which breeds in open fen mires in Central Europe. Aquatic Warbler populations have so far been assessed using a complete survey that aims to enumerate all singing males over a large area. Because this approach provides no estimate of precision and does not account for observation error

SUBMITTER: Oppel S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3979853 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature