More problems sampling wildlife with baits: Environmental food resources influence trapping rates

Abstract

Baits are often used to increase wildlife capture rates; however, there has been little work exploring the effect of varying environmental conditions on bait effectiveness. Here we show that environmental food availability influences wildlife detection probability when using food baits. We sampled small mammals in Borneo with live traps baited with fruit before, during and after the rainforest experienced a mast fruiting event, which drastically altered environmental food availability. Compared to sampling before the mast, community-wide trap success plummeted by 94% during the mast when fruit resources were abundant then increased back 10-fold the month following peak masting. We conclude that environmental food availability can strongly influence bait effectiveness and thus detectability. Therefore, researchers using food baits should control for background food conditions when sampling. Alternatively, population models need to account for these variations in detection probability. These methodological insights are especially important in ecosystems where resources strongly fluctuate.

Keywords

baiting / capture-recapture / detection / masting / small mammals

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RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2024 The Author(s). Wildlife Letters published by Northeast Forestry University and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.