Supplementing human observation with artificial intelligence impacts demographic estimates for a Critically Endangered lizard.

Species conservation relies heavily on population estimates derived from capture-recapture analyses, which are liable to produce biased results if individual animals are incorrectly identified. Captive and known-animal studies have shown that supplementing human observation with artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reduce these errors. However, no study has directly quantified the relationship between using AI for individual identification and the demographic estimates it produces for a threatened population in situ. 
We compared the demographic estimates produced by capture-recapture analyses of two distinct encounter histories constructed from the same survey data; one produced using individual identifications made by human observers alone (the 'Human-Only data set'), and one produced using AI software to aid individual identification (the AI-Supplemented data set'). This approach enabled us to address two key questions: (i) does the use of artificial intelligence softwar..., This data includes encounter histories saved as text .inp files for use in ProgramMARK. The collapsed encounter histories were used in goodness of fit tests (TESTS 2+3 in ProgramMARK). The full histories were used for Robust Design capture-recapture analysis (Huggin's p's and c's in ProgramMARK)., , # Supplementing human observation with artificial intelligence impacts demographic estimates for a Critically Endangered lizard.

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bvq83bkkh](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bvq83bkkh)

## Description of the data and file structure

These files contain two sets of encounter histories constructed by alternative individual identification methods, and were used in our paper to highlight the practical impact individual identification methods can have on real-world conservation scenarios. The collapsed encounter histories in these sets were used for goodness of fit testing whilst the full encounter histories formed the primary date for our analysis; using a robust design method in ProgramMARK.

### Files and variables

The encounter history files are provided in .inp format; these can be opened and viewed in software capable of reading .txt files, such as notepad. In the 'collapsed' files, presence and absence of an individual is recorded for each of the 5 primary...