Distance sampling of forest snakes and lizards

Product Type: Journal Article

Year: 2002

Author(s): Rodda, G.H. and E.W. Campbell

Suggested Citation:
Rodda, G.H. and E.W. Campbell. 2002. Distance sampling of forest snakes and lizards. Herpetological Review 33(4): 271-274.

Abstract

How does one test the validity of a population enumeration technique? Most validation studies perform “soft” validation; they attempt either to correlate the counts from two or more methods (Fitch 1992) or to compare the economic costs, difficulty, time requirements, or non-economic costs of carrying out selected methods (Strong et al. 1993). Soft validation does not establish the accuracy of a method. “Hard” validation, in which population estimates are checked against the true values, is obviously desirable, but it is always difficult to do and might be impossible for some systems. Hard validation studies involving reptiles or amphibians are rare and usually involve the artificial stocking of a bounded plot (Henke 1998; Rose and Armentrout 1974)…