Estimating population density and connectivity of American mink using spatial capture-recapture

Estimating the abundance or density of populations is fundamental to the conservation and management of species, and as landscapes become more fragmented, maintaining landscape connectivity has become one of the most important challenges for biodiversity conservation. Yet these two issues have never been formally integrated together in a model that simultaneously models abundance while accounting for connectivity of a landscape. We demonstrate an application of using capture-recapture to develop a model of animal density using a least-cost path model for individual encounter probability that accounts for non-Euclidean connectivity of a highly structured network. We utilized scat detection dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) as a means of collecting non-invasive genetic samples of American mink (Neovison vison) individuals, and used spatial capture-recapture models (SCR) to gain inferences about mink population density and connectivity. Density of mink was not constant across the landscape, bu...