Ten year camera trap dataset of tigers in India

1. With continued global changes, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation, the need for assessment of long-term population dynamics and population monitoring of threatened species is growing. One powerful way to estimate population size and dynamics is through capture-recapture methods. Spatial capture (SCR) models for open populations make efficient use of capture-recapture data, while being robust to design changes. Relatively few studies have implemented open SCR models and to date, very few have explored potential issues in defining these models. We develop a series of simulation studies to examine the effects of the state space definition and between-primary-period movement models on demographic parameter estimation. We demonstrate the implications on a 10-year camera-trap study of tigers in India. (This is the dataset presented here).

2. The results of our simulation study show that movement biases survival estimates in open SCR models when little is...