Digital Still Camera and Wildlife Photo Identification by Brittany Ash

What are Digital Still Camera and Wildlife Photo Identification Technologies?

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 01:01:06 UTC

Wildlife-Photo Identification is a technique used into identify and track individuals of a wild animal study population over time. It relies on capturing photographs of distinctive characteristics such as skin patterns and scars from the animal. Photo-identification allows individual recognition of animal species based on natural marks, being an alternative to other more stressful artificial tagging/marking techniques (Data-Corte 2016).
Photo-ID Conservation Research: North Gulf Oceanic Society currently uses this TPR to track movement of Killer Whale pods and to better understand their biology.

http://www.whalesalaska.org/about.htm

How has this TPR helped conservation efforts?

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 01:19:00 UTC

Bird of Prey monitoring study: Monitored nests of the Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis), the Common Buzzard (Buteo buteo) and the Rough-legged Buzzard (Buteo lagopus) with a set of video surveillance equipment and a movie camera.
The aim of the study was to check existing long-term data on the diet of the Goshawk and the Common Buzzard obtained by collection of uneaten prey remains and pellets that are known to give a biased estimation of raptor diet by surveillance (Reif 2006).
How has this helped conservation?
By deciphering nest biology for 3 species of birds of prey. It is difficult to obtain scientific information on nesting culture of many birds. Thanks to this technology, scientists were able to obtain diet information for nesting birds of prey.

Strengths

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 03:25:08 UTC

1. Non-intrusive form of science for subjects!
2. Inexpensive form of science!

Weaknesses

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 03:25:18 UTC

1. Choosing the right camera. (Will this camera's speed be first enough? Will the shutter capture stable images?)
2. Time

Citations

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 03:25:36 UTC

About North Gulf Oceanic Society. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.whalesalaska.org/about.htm

Dala-Corte, R. B., Moschetta, J. B., & Becker, F. G. (2016). Photo-identification as a technique for recognition of individual fish: a test with the freshwater armored catfish Rineloricaria aequalicuspis Reis & Cardoso, 2001 (Siluriformes: Loricariidae). Neotropical Ichthyology, 14(1). doi: 10.1590/1982-0224-20150074

Reif, V., & Tornberg, R. (2006). Using time-lapse digital video recording for a nesting study of birds of prey. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 52(4), 251–258. doi: 10.1007/s10344-006-0039-1

Sacchi, R., Scali, S., Mangiacotti, M., Sannolo, M., & Zuffi, M. A. (2016). Digital identification and analysis. Reptile Ecology and Conservation, 59–72. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198726135.003.0005

Strengths...continued

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 03:35:45 UTC

1. Digital identication (i.e. photographic identication) of individual animals is a non-intrusive way to obtain information on life-history traits that is based on dis- tinctive individual morphological characteristics (such as patterns of ornamentation or morphology) that remain unchanged over time despite skin moulting (Sacchi 2016).
2. Digital identication has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive (entailing only a digital camera and computer)

Weaknesses...continued

ash_brittany93 — 2020-03-02 03:42:49 UTC

1. The choice of camera and lens depends on the subject’s size, species, and fieldwork conditions. However, the greatest possible image resolution is always preferable.
2. A major constraint involved in this process is the large amount of time required for image acquisition and comparison, which is likely to increase exponentially with increasing sample size. Indeed, for small catalogues (i.e. <50 individuals), image matching is still feasible by eye. When catalogue items exceed 100 or so, however, the identi cation process becomes hugely time-consuming and misclassi cation errors occur frequently (Sacchi 2016).