Evidence of region-wide bat population decline from long-term monitoring and Bayesian occupancy models with empirically informed priors.

ABSTRACT: Strategic conservation efforts for cryptic species, especially bats, are hindered by limited understanding of distribution and population trends. Integrating long-term encounter surveys with multi-season occupancy models provides a solution whereby inferences about changing occupancy probabilities and latent changes in abundance can be supported. When harnessed to a Bayesian inferential paradigm, this modeling framework offers flexibility for conservation programs that need to update prior model-based understanding about at-risk species with new data. This scenario is exemplified by a bat monitoring program in the Pacific Northwestern United States in which results from 8 years of surveys from 2003 to 2010 require updating with new data from 2016 to 2018. The new data were collected after

SUBMITTER: Rodhouse TJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6802066 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature