With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14‐week period (17 August–24 November of 2019). We sampled wildlife at 1,509 camera trap sites from 110 camera trap arrays covering 12 different ecoregions across four development zones. This effort resulted in 166,036 unique detections of 83 species of mammals and 17 species of birds. All images were processed through the Smithsonian’s eMammal camera trap data repository and included an expert review phase to ensure taxonomic accuracy of data, resulting in each picture being reviewed at least twice. The results represent a timely and standardized camera trap survey of the United States. All of the 2019 survey data are made available herein. We are currently repeating surveys in fall 2020, opening up the opportunity to other institutions and cooperators to expand coverage of all the urban–wild gradients and ecophysiographic regions of the country. Future data will be available as the database is updated at eMammal.si.edu/snapshot‐usa, as will future data paper submissions. These data will be useful for local and macroecological research including the examination of community assembly, effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape variables, effects of fragmentation and extinction debt dynamics, as well as species‐specific population dynamics and conservation action plans. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this paper when using the data for publication.
Tropical biodiversity is threatened globally by anthropogenic disturbances, particularly forest degradation and overhunting. Where large mammals have been extirpated, smaller bodied “mesomammals” may play an important ecological role (e.g., as seed dispersers). However, these species are disproportionally affected by overhunting for wildlife trade markets and are routinely understudied as they tend to be rare, cryptic, and nocturnal. Few studies have examined spatiotemporal responses to anthropogenic disturbance by mesomammals at the community level, which may identify imbalances within an ecosystem that could threaten species persistence. We deployed camera traps throughout Cat Tien National Park (i.e., Nam Cat Tien area), southern Vietnam, to (1) identify long‐term changes in terrestrial mesomammal richness and (2) evaluate the effects of forest structure and anthropogenic disturbance on an 18‐species mesomammal community within a historically disturbed tropical forest using hierarchical Bayesian community occupancy models. We found that site occupancy was driven by the interaction between distance to seasonally inundated grassland and absolute forest cover (basal area per hectare). This may be due to the combination of intact forest benefits (refuge from predators and hunters, denning sites) and early successional grassland resources (forage quality), as well as high levels of tolerance for disturbed forest among the largely generalist mesomammal community of Nam Cat Tien. We found no negative effects of current anthropogenic factors at the community level. However, we did find that four disturbance‐tolerant small carnivores have been extirpated since the 1990s and continued human presence in the park suggests that hunting and snaring remain an acute threat to native mesomammals. Without continued efforts to address the unsustainable harvest of wildlife, Southeast Asian's remaining mesomammals are at risk of extirpation despite resilience to moderate levels of disturbance.
Tropical forests are the most species‐rich biomes in the world but suffer high rates of logging and conversion. Tropical tree‐dwelling (arboreal and semi‐arboreal) mesomammals reliant on old‐growth forest structures are especially vulnerable. The degree of behavioral arboreality of semi‐arboreal mammals can be related to forest structure and perceived terrestrial threats. Paired arboreal and terrestrial camera traps are a promising new method for estimating the arboreality of cryptic and nocturnal species. Our study aimed to (1) model the effects of forest structure and anthropogenic disturbance on the detection and occurrence of arboreal and semi‐arboreal mesomammals and (2) evaluate differences in occurrence and detection between paired arboreal and terrestrial camera trap sites for semi‐arboreal mammals while estimating the degree of arboreality. We set 20 terrestrial and arboreal camera trap pairs in eastern Cat Tien National Park (Nam Cat Tien), Vietnam, from June 2019 to September 2020. We evaluated the effects of forest structure and proximity to roads on nine arboreal mesomammal species using single‐season occupancy models. We used multi‐scale occupancy modeling to estimate the degree of arboreality for four semi‐arboreal mammals. All models were fit using hierarchical Bayesian modeling and compared using WAIC. We detected most arboreal and terrestrial mesomammal species currently known to inhabit Nam Cat Tien, including rare and cryptic species. Canopy connectivity and other mature forest characteristics were important for explaining the detection and occurrence of highly arboreal species, while the effect of a tree and focal limb characteristics on detection was species‐specific. All semi‐arboreal species had a greater probability of terrestrial station use than arboreal, suggesting a greater vulnerability to terrestrial threats, though the degree of arboreality varied by species. Using one sampling method underestimated occupancy for most semi‐arboreal species. Multi‐method sampling designs with multi‐scale occupancy modeling can improve estimates of species distribution and habitat use for guiding management and conservation decisions.
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