Bridge bias: Is convenience sampling misleading conservation?

Reliable ecological field surveys are an essential aspect of effective conservation and management practices. While probabilistic survey designs help reduce bias and adequately capture population and assemblage metrics, many researchers turn instead to convenience survey designs because of practical limitations like public access. We compared population and assemblage metrics for freshwater mussels at convenience (i.e., sites less than 500 m from public access) versus probabilistic sampling locations for three case studies distributed throughout North America (Texas and Michigan, United States and Ontario, Canada) to explore potential biases across sampling types. Data and scripts provided herein were used to assess differences in sampling techniques. This research was supported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) through the Aquatic Nuisance Species Research Program’s (ANSRP) focus on Next Generation Ecological Modeling (W912HZ-23-2-0051). Surveys used in this study were funded by USACE ANSRP (Texas surveys), the Kalamazoo River Community Recreational Foundation (Michigan surveys), Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Species at Risk Program (Ontario surveys), and Texas State University, USA (Ontario surveys).