Title
Evaluation of detection dogs for fecal DNA based elephant surveys in Myanmar.
Author(s)
Hedges, Simon; Hurt, Aimee; Parker, Megan; Lynam, Tony; Po, Saw Htoo Tha; Myint, Kyaw
Published
2014
Abstract
Population monitoring is an essential part of wildlife management and conservation but reliable monitoring of small populations of elephants and other species in forests presents formidable challenges. The use of fecal DNA based capture-recapture (CMR) methods has become more popular as the costs of laboratory analyses have fallen, solutions to a number of statistical and other problems have been developed, and the advantages of using non -invasive genetic survey methods over conventional fecal count based methods been demonstrated. Nevertheless, finding sufficient quantities of fresh feces over the relatively short time periods necessary for CMR surveys remains a challenge in places where the target species live at low densities. In late 2013, we assessed whether detection dogs trained on elephant dung offered significant advantages over human searchers in locating Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) feces for DNA based CMR surveys of elephants in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, Myanmar. Comparing dog/handler/mahout teams to biologist/mahout teams, dog teams displayed increased detection distances, increased detection off -trails, and increased number of dung -piles found compared to experienced human -only search teams. However, the difference between the performance of the dog and human -only teams was not great enough to warrant a recommendation for using dogs for elephant -only surveys, at least in the Myanmar context. Since detection dogs can be trained on a wide variety of species of interest they may be usefully deployed to search for elephant dung (and elephant carcasses) along with scats from dhole (Cuon alpinus), tiger (Panthera tigris), and live animals such as turtle and tortoise species and other taxa important to Myanmar or th region.
Keywords
Monitoring; Elephas maximus; capture-recapture

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