Detectability of ten invasive mammal pests in New Zealand: a synthesis of spatial detection parameters

Management of invasive mammal pests plays an integral role in the conservation of New Zealand’s native flora and fauna. Models fitted to pest capture data can guide conservation managers by providing estimates of pest densities within a management area, or probabilities of absence for declaring local eradication. A key parameter of these models is the detectability, i.e. the probability of an animal being detected by a surveillance device for a given amount of survey effort. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive review of both spatially explicit capture-recapture and home-range studies reporting estimates of two commonly applied spatial detectability parameters for ten of New Zealand’s invasive mammal pests. We summarise study attributes including habitat, season, and surveillance device type, to assess how detectability varies over different environmental, biological, and survey conditions, and to identify knowledge gaps for prioritising future research.