survey design

Accurate surveys and monitoring are required to guide the conservation and management of threatened species. Some fauna species that are cryptic or difficult to observe because they are nocturnal, mimic other species, conceal themselves, or can be incredibly hard to survey. Emergence and activity of these species may be related to complex environmental cues including weather and atmospheric conditions. The conservation status of New Zealand’s long-tailed bat (Chalinolobus tuberculatus) is Threatened-Nationally Critical.

When designing large-scale bird monitoring schemes, financial constraints often require researchers to make trade-offs in the spatial resolution and precision of the density estimates by varying the number of sites monitored and the intensity of sampling effort per site.