topic: Surveying

topic: Surveying

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Sliver of hope as ‘mountain chicken’ frog shows resistance to deadly disease
- A Caribbean frog species known as the mountain chicken is on the brink of extinction due to the spread of an infectious fungal disease.
- However, a recent survey found that there were still 21 of these supersized frogs on the island of Dominica.
- Some of these frogs were found to have genes resistant to the fungal disease, raising hope for the species’ survival.

Where satellites come up short, drones can fill in a picture of our oceans
- Marine researchers are increasingly turning to aerial drones for a new view of the ocean, given that their resolution is much finer than that of satellites.
- While drones are used in all kinds of ways in marine studies, researchers say drones can be equipped with special sensors to track small changes in the ocean’s movements that drive much of marine life.
- Drones could be especially helpful in finding and tracking local and dangerous algae blooms, for example.
- Researchers remain hindered by regulations and cost, but that hasn’t stopped them from using drones to increase our knowledge of our blue planet.

Stronghold for Africa’s rarest falcon discovered in reserve threatened by Mozambique insurgency
- A team of biologists has discovered a new nesting stronghold for Africa’s rarest falcon in northern Mozambique.
- Multiple active breeding sites of the Taita falcon were found in a survey of granite domes, or inselbergs, in Niassa Special Reserve.
- The survey findings may shift scientific understanding of the typical habitat of the Taita falcon, with an estimated population of no more than 1,000 scattered across East and Southern Africa.
- The Niassa reserve is threatened by poaching and illegal mining, as well as a new threat from an armed insurgency centered in nearby Cabo Delgado province.

Latest seismic survey blocked in South Africa court on fishers’ challenge
- A South African court has blocked the continuation of a seismic survey for oil and gas off the country’s west coast.
- The judge agreed with fishing communities and civil society organizations that Australian geoscience company Searcher’s consultation process excluded fishing communities.
- The ruling is the latest successful challenge to a prospecting permit on the basis that it denied local communities their right to participate in environmental decisions.

Court order blocks Shell’s seismic surveys off South Africa’s Wild Coast
- A petition by environmentalists, Indigenous groups and fisheries organizations succeeded in temporarily halting oil giant Shell’s plans to conduct seismic surveys off South Africa’s Wild Coast to prospect for oil and gas reserves below the seabed.
- Conservation groups cited the potential impact on the breeding grounds of southern right whales and humpback whales, and the effect on the local fisheries sector.
- The recent order hinges on whether affected communities that hold traditional rights, including fishing rights in the waters, were properly consulted.
- The judge ruled that they were not, while also noting that concerns about irreversible harm to marine life were “reasonable.”

DNA assessment confirms Gabon as last stronghold of forest elephants
- A new survey has found that there are more than 95,000 critically endangered forest elephants in Gabon, which is considered to be the last remaining stronghold for the species.
- The researchers came to this estimate after collecting elephant dung samples across Gabon and analyzing each sample’s genetic material.
- The survey found that forest elephants were present in about 90% of the country, in both protected and nonprotected areas.
- Forest elephants have been heavily poached in Gabon in the last couple of decades, with 25,000 killed in Gabon’s Minkébé National Park alone between 2004 and 2014.

An owl not seen in over a century makes a brief return — then vanishes again
- Researchers have confirmed the first sighting of a rare owl last seen in Borneo nearly 130 years ago.
- The rediscovery of the Bornean Rajah scops-owl (Otus brookii brookii) came during a chance encounter on May 4, 2016, seven years into a long-term research project on Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia.
- The researchers say the history of speciation in the region could justify naming the Bornean Rajah scops-owl as its own species, distinct from the Sumatran subspecies, O. b. solokensis.
- The Bornean bird is under pressure from deforestation and climate change, which threaten to shrink its habitat and drive it further upslope.

Eye in the Sky: Tech makes satellite imagery increasingly attractive for wildlife surveys
- An interdisciplinary team of zoologists and conservationists from the University of Oxford and the University of Bath have used machine learning to identify African elephants in high-resolution satellite imagery.
- Satellite imagery does not yet have good enough resolution to compete with more traditional on-the-ground methods, such as Save the Elephants’ oblique camera count approach.
- Satellite surveying still offers many advantages such as being unobtrusive for wildlife and the ability to survey inaccessible areas.
- As satellite imagery and machine learning continue to improve, satellite surveying may become an increasingly useful tool for conservationists.

Sharks nearby? A bottle of seawater can hold the answer, study says
- A new study has been able to identify the presence of blacktip sharks in the waters of Terra Ceia Bay in Florida through eDNA detection in water samples.
- The water samples contained more blacktip eDNA in the spring and summer months, which is when the species uses the bay as a nursery, and less eDNA in the fall, which is when the sharks start to leave the area.
- While the current technique indicates if sharks are present in the water, it isn’t sensitive enough to provide an accurate population count.

Ornithologists discover more rare hornbills than thought on Philippine island
- A new study of the endemic and rare Visayan tarictic hornbill (Penelopides panini) on Negros Island in the Philippines shows that the population of the endangered bird may be double the previous estimate of the IUCN.
- A 2001 assessment by the IUCN estimated the total number of tarictic hornbills on the islands of Negros and Panay at 1,800; this new study finds nearly 3,600 hornbills in Negros alone.
- Hornbills are among the most threatened bird species in the Philippines; a subspecies of the taritic hornbill was the first first hornbill in the country to be declared extinct, in 2013, after it disappeared from the island of Ticao.
- The study is the first to establish an existing population of tarictic hornbills for the island of Negros and the first to identify bird populations in each remaining forest area on the island.

An armada of turtles, caught on drone cam, flocks to the Great Barrier Reef
- New drone video shows thousands of endangered green turtles swimming ashore to Raine Island on the outer edges of the Great Barrier Reef.
- Researchers captured this video to help survey the nesting turtle population, and in the process demonstrated that this technique is more effective than manually counting turtles from boats. They recorded 64,000 turtles nesting on Raine Island this season.
- There’s been an increase in the number of nesting green turtles around the world, including Raine Island, likely due to conservation efforts and fishing moratoriums.
- Team members at the Raine Island Recovery Project are working to restore the island’s beaches to ensure that green turtles can continue to safely nest there.

Number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico down by more than half
- The number of monarch butterflies wintering in Mexico is down by more than half this year, according to new survey results.
- The area of forest inhabited by monarchs in Mexican forests is used as a proxy for estimating the monarch butterfly population. The survey found that the area of forest occupied by monarch butterflies during the 2019-2020 winter season was just 7 acres (2.83 hectares), a 53% decrease from the 2018-2019 season, when monarchs covered 15 acres (6.05 hectares) of forest.
- In a statement, Jorge Rickards, the managing director of WWF-Mexico, said that the decline in the monarch butterfly population wintering in Mexico is not necessarily a cause for alarm, but added that “we must remain vigilant and not allow it to become a trend in the coming years. Conservation is a long-term job.”

Key cetacean site in Philippines sees drop in dolphin, whale sightings
- A recent survey has confirmed a declining trend in sightings of dolphins and whales in the Tañon Strait in the central Philippines, a waterway declared an Important Marine Mammal Area by the IUCN.
- The strait is a migratory route for at least 11 cetacean species, including the vulnerable Gray’s spinner dolphin and the endangered false killer whale, but four surveys carried out since 1999 have shown a sharp decline in population and species sightings.
- One bright spot in the latest survey was the sighting of rose-bellied dwarf spinner dolphins, only the second time that the species has ever been spotted in Philippine waters.
- The strait is one of the country’s busiest sea lanes, encountering heavy fishing and tourism activities, which researchers say may be a factor for the downward trend. They call for further collaboration to enact stringent measures on fishing and tourism activities to protect the area.

Film that fish: Stereo-video speeds surveys of marine fish communities
- Researchers use underwater visual surveys to assess the sizes of fish in marine communities and their associated habitats, but diver-based data collection is time-consuming and requires expertise, and results may vary among different data collectors.
- A multinational research team recently published the first guide to help researchers using diver-operated stereo-video methods (stereo-DOVs) to standardize surveys of fish assemblages (species and their abundances) and their associated habitat.
- The video provides a permanent, shareable record of each survey transect, including the species and numbers of fish seen, while the stereo option allows researchers to measure fish using overlapping images.
- The guide provides information on appropriate equipment; designing a stereo‐DOV if needed; operating it during underwater studies; processing the video data after collection; and analyzing fish behavior, population features and habitat in the resulting video.

New eDNA sampling system aims for cleaner, more efficient field research
- Researchers tested a new self-preserving filter housing system that automatically preserves eDNA from water samples, while reducing the risk of DNA contamination and plastic waste.
- Scientists who use eDNA currently rely on cumbersome cold storage or liquid preservatives and single-use sampling equipment to preserve their eDNA samples, which are highly sensitive to degradation as well as contamination.
- The new system incorporates a hydrophilic plastic material in its filter housing that physically pulls water from the sample without having to add chemicals.
- In a six-month test, it allowed data collectors to preserve samples quickly and easily, at ambient temperature and with far reduced plastic waste, preventing degradation for weeks and with slightly higher amounts of captured DNA than a standard method.

Counting on eDNA for a faster, easier way to count coral
- Environmental DNA, known as eDNA, is genetic material sloughed off by animals or plants and found in soil, air, or water, and allows scientists to collect and analyze genetic material without having to retrieve it from a species directly.
- Researchers in Hawaii found that the amount of eDNA in water samples is related to coral abundance and thus can be used to conduct accurate surveys of local coral populations using less time and money than sending SCUBA divers down to do the surveys.
- Coral reefs have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem globally and are one of the most threatened, thanks to climate change and direct human impact. eDNA could help researchers evaluate coral abundance and health more quickly, easily and cost-effectively.

Lift-off for thermal-imaging system to estimate wildlife populations
- A research team hailed a breakthrough in their imaging system’s ability to detect and identify orangutans in tropical rainforest.
- They now plan for computer algorithms to report back what a thermal camera has seen in real time.
- The researchers believe the system could also be used to spot poachers targeting rare species.

Study finds bears react, then habituate, to drones
- Small drones increasingly serve as tools to monitor wildlife, detect habitat change, or search for poachers, but their use may be stressing out the animals being studied or other species.
- A research team tested whether black bears would habituate to the repeated presence of drones flying overhead and, if so, whether they would remain habituated to additional flights conducted after a break.
- The bears showed an increased tolerance to drone flights in the short term, which they maintained after a nearly four-month pause.
- With the expanding use of drones in wildlife and habitat studies, the researchers expect their findings to help inform best practices that could reduce animal disturbance in the long run.

Can satellite data help monitor sustainable rural development?
- Rural residents in lower-income countries rely on natural resources for part of their livelihood, so a team of researchers explored whether farm-scale environmental characteristics obtained from satellite imagery could help assess and monitor rural poverty.
- Researchers found that integrating satellite data at four spatial scales could predict the poorest households across a landscape in Kenya with 62 percent accuracy, despite differences in how individual households interacted with the surrounding environment.
- The size of buildings within a homestead, the amount of bare agricultural land within and adjacent to the homestead, and the length of the growing season were the best predictors of the wealth of a given household.
- The researchers suggest that the increasing availability of high-resolution satellite data will enable their method to be better able to monitor progress toward meeting the sustainable development goals.

Nepali scientists deploy drones to count endangered crocodiles
- Researchers in Nepal used drone images to survey critically endangered gharial crocodiles along the banks of the Babai River, comparing their results to those of multi-team ground surveys.
- Analysis of the drone images produced counts of gharials and mugger crocodiles similar to those of ground survey teams, in less time and at a lower cost.
- The researchers stressed the importance of conducting aerial surveys when environmental conditions are most conducive, such as during the winter months when water clarity in the Babai River enables counts of gharials just under the water’s surface.

Researchers weed out a way to identify plants using environmental DNA
- Scientists have developed genetic markers to help identify plant species using environmental DNA (eDNA), the traces of biological material (pollen, spores, skin, scales, etc.) that contains an organism’s unique genetic material. Unlike animal DNA, no universal plant DNA markers exist that can be applied across many plant species and still effectively identify specimens to the species level.
- Researchers focused on one diverse aquatic plant group, pondweeds, which function as effective indicators of water conditions and quality, to make their markers as effective as possible in identifying species from water samples.
- The team detected five of the pondweed species in samples from a research reserve in Ontario, three of which were new to the reserve, demonstrating that eDNA analysis can detect plant species in water samples, including those not known from earlier studies to be present.

Automating drone-based wildlife surveys saves time and money, study finds
- Reserve managers have begun to survey wildlife in savanna ecosystems by analyzing thousands of images captured using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones), a time-consuming process.
- A research team has developed machine learning models that analyze such aerial images and automatically identify those images most likely to contain animals, which, according to the authors, is usually a small fraction of the total number of images taken during a UAV survey effort.
- The new algorithms reduced the number of images that needed human verification to less than one-third of that using earlier models, and they highlight the patterns in those images that are most likely to be animals, making the technique useful for image-based surveys of large landscapes with animals in relatively few images.

In blood-sucking leeches, scientists find a genetic snapshot of local wildlife
- Scientists have identified mammals present at sites in Asia by examining the DNA in the blood sucked by leeches.
- They found that the nearly 750 Haemadipsa (blood-sucking) leeches stored the DNA of a diversity of other species, from mice to monkeys and birds, not to mention humans and domestic animals.
- Collecting terrestrial leeches is fast, cheap, and easy (they come to you!), and they feed on a broad spectrum of mammals, enabling them to serve as cost-effective tools for determining the presence of even scarce and elusive species.

Coral reef monitoring takes to the skies: drone-mounted hyperspectral cameras help scientists assess health of coral reefs
- Hyperspectral images taken from cameras on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are helping scientists survey the composition and health of coral reefs under the water.
- These images capture information from visible (light) and non-visible sections of the electromagnetic spectrum thereby offering information the human eye can’t see.
- When paired with UAVs or satellites, hyperspectral images allow researchers to survey the reef habitats–including coral, sand, and algae–over large areas as well as monitor the health of individual corals.

Drones enable fast, accurate wildlife counts, study shows
- Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have great potential for surveying wildlife, especially species that assemble in large numbers and that are easily disturbed by human presence.
- Scientists creatively combined high-tech UAVs and computer-vision algorithms with rubber ducks to assess the potential of aerial imagery to count seabirds relative to traditional survey methods.
- They found that both human and semi-automated computer counts of colony-nesting birds from UAV-derived images were more accurate and less variable than counts made by observers on the ground.
- Combining UAV-derived imagery with artificial intelligence can help scientists more accurately estimate population sizes with less variability.

Counting tigers on smartphones
- India’s 2018 national tiger estimation will use an Android-based mobile application to streamline collection of field data on tigers and prey, add photos and GPS coordinates, record poaching and human-wildlife conflict, and reduce error in data entry.
- The M-STrIPES app uploads field data automatically to a remote central server for rapid analysis or stores the data on the user’s mobile phone until internet access is available.
- The app has been tested successfully in a few tiger reserves, made more user friendly, and is now being rolled out on a national scale, but can it help resolve discrepancies in survey results?

Thylacine survey: Are we going to rediscover the ‘moonlight tiger’?
- The thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) was declared extinct in 1936. But anecdotal reports of sightings of the marsupial inspired a recent media frenzy, leading to speculation that some might still be living in the forests of northern Queensland’s Cape York Peninsula.
- A biological survey conducted via camera traps had been planned for the region before news of the reported sightings spread. The aim of the survey is to find out why so many of Australia’s native marsupials – and those of Cape York in particular – are disappearing. They also hope to figure out if there are any as-yet undocumented mammals living there, such as a small, endangered rat-kangaroo called the northern bettong (Bettongia tropica).
- A bettong expert says cattle ranching, invasive animals, and changing fire management regimes may be hurting native mammals in Australia.
- The researchers caution that the possibility of finding evidence of thylacines living in Cape York is vanishingly small. But, if the near-impossible happens and they do manage to document some, they say news of the rediscovery likely won’t be released until protections are enacted.

Scientists launch expedition to find missing monkeys
- Vanzolini’s bald-faced saki hasn’t been seen since scientists first discovered it in western Brazil in the 1930s.
- Navigating along the Rio Juruá and its tributaries, the expedition will be the first comprehensive biological survey of the region.
- Its international team of researchers hopes to uncover the saki, as well as other yet-undocumented species, while calling conservation attention to the river and surrounding rainforest.

Bolivian expedition discovers 1,000th bird species
- Madidi National Park is situated in northern Bolivia and is considered one of the most biodiverse protected areas in the world.
- Identidad Madidi is a two-year biological expedition currently surveying the flora and fauna of Madidi National Park.
- The 1,000th bird species – a dusky-tailed flatbill (Ramphotrigon fuscicauda) – was discovered through a recording of its call, and came as a surprise to the expedition’s ornithologist.

Bringing field surveys into the modern, mobile world
- Open Data Kit, a set of free and open-source survey tools, can integrate GPS locations, photos, videos and audio files into customized forms, while also working off-the-grid.
- Users can transfer data collected in the field from the mobile device to a server and upload to Excel, Google Maps, or more sophisticated statistical analysis software.
- Open Data Kit requires electricity to charge mobile devices, as well as the physical presence of surveyors to conduct the interviews, but its use can simplify data processing.

Match the footprint: error-prone method of identifying wild cats
- Study found that size and shape of footprints of small-sized wild cat species and domestic cats were similar.
- Similarity of footprints could pose a problem for researchers conducting surveys in areas that have both wild, and domestic or feral cats, study warns.
- Instead of relying on footprints alone, researchers suggest that animal surveys should incorporate multiple methods.

Call of the Wild Tiger: using acoustics software to identify individual tigers by their calls
- Wildlife acoustics help field researchers estimate population size and presence of a range of animal species.
- The Prusten Project uses automated recording units to identify tigers, which may help in estimating population sizes in dense forest landscapes and pinpointing core management zones.
- Understanding population dynamics of wild tigers can help direct the flow of resources (e.g. funds and rangers) to specific core areas to combat poaching attempts and to protect these areas from negative human impacts.

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