02273nas a2200205   4500008004100000245010700041210006900148520160100217653001601818653001801834653002001852653001401872653002901886653001601915653001701931653002901948100002301977700002302000856004402023       2020                        eng d00aDoes the presence of an observer affect a bird's occurrence rate or singing rate during a point count?0 aDoes the presence of an observer affect a birds occurrence rate 3 a<p>The approach or presence of an observer may affect the behavior of nearby birds, rendering them either more or less detectable than when no observer is present due to a change in singing rates. To test whether there are systematic detection biases associated with the presence of an observer during point count bird surveys, we compared the occurrence and singing rates of birds during a 10‐min period immediately preceding the time when an observer arrived to conduct a count and during the formal count itself by extracting song information from autonomous sound recorders. We obtained recordings of 36 species of birds detected at &ge;5 locations in one of three vegetation types, including burned conifer forest, green conifer/riparian streamside forest, and riparian bottomland/marshland. We found that species richness and both the probability of occurrence and singing rate for any of the species recorded were unaffected by the presence of an observer. In addition, the probability of occurrence did not differ significantly among four 2.5‐min recording sessions during 10‐min counts when an observer was present. Thus, the presence of an observer did not appear to introduce any detectable systematic bias that would make bird lists or unadjusted occurrence rates inaccurate on that basis alone. In addition, rates of bird occurrence across 2.5‐min temporal subsets of a 10‐min count did not vary in a systematic way that would violate the assumption of equal occupancy across adjacent time periods as sometimes used to build detection histories in occupancy modeling.</p>
10abird survey10adetectability10aobserver effect10aoccupancy10apassive acousticsampling10apoint count10asinging rate10autonomous recording unit1 aHutto, Richard, L.1 aHutto, Russell, R.  uhttp://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/jofo.1232902656nas a2200253   4500008004100000022001400041245013100055210006900186260001600255520187700271653001202148653001802160653001502178653001602193653002102209100001202230700001802242700001502260700001602275700001602291700001402307700001902321856006202340       2019                        eng d  a0067-223800aUsing Passive Acoustic Recording and Automated Call Identification to Survey Koalas in the Southern Forests of New South Wales0 aUsing Passive Acoustic Recording and Automated Call Identificati  cJul-10-20213 a<p>Cost-effective surveys of low density koala populations are challenging, but technological developments in the acoustics field offer great potential for landscape-scale surveys and monitoring. We assessed passive acoustic recording coupled with automated call identification as a survey method for koalas Phascolarctos cinereus. Surveys targeted areas of previously known koala activity based on scat surveys in southern forests of New South Wales where a low density of koalas is suspected. We set 24 Song Meters to record at night over a two week period (~3,696 hours) in the koala breeding season (October/November) in Murrah Flora Reserve. Recordings were scanned by a koala call recogniser and &ldquo;matches&rdquo; were manually verified. Across the 24 sites, 522 validated koala bellows were recorded at 21 sites (87.5 % detection rate). Three environmental variables had most influence on detection probability of koalas, including nightly rainfall (-ve), nightly temperature (-ve) and topographic position (lower on ridges). Calling activity peaked at midnight. Sustained site occupancy, at least in the short-term, was apparent as under optimal conditions (no rain) koalas were recorded, on average, for &gt; 50 % of survey nights rather than for just a few nights. We suggest that only a modest survey effort (4&ndash;5 nights) in the breeding season, on nights with &lt; 3 mm of rain, is required to achieve 90&ndash;95 % probability of koala call detection in an area of low koala density. Comparison with scat surveys at the same sites revealed that detection rates were more than three times greater with acoustic surveys. Technological advances will continue to provide improvements for wildlife survey, and perhaps most importantly, for collecting much needed long-term data to assess trends in occupancy or other population attributes over time.</p>
10abellows10adetectability10amonitoring10aSong Meters10aWildlife surveys1 aLaw, B.1 aGonsalves, L.1 aBilney, R.1 aPeterie, J.1 aPietsch, R.1 aRoe, Paul1 aTruskinger, A.  uhttp://publications.rzsnsw.org.au/doi/10.7882/AZ.2019.033