Assessing the suitability of a one-time sampling event for close-kin mark-recapture: A caribou case study

Abstract

Abundance estimation is frequently an objective of conservation and monitoring initiatives for threatened and other managed populations. While abundance estimation via capture–mark–recapture or spatially explicit capture–recapture is now common, such approaches are logistically challenging and expensive for species such as boreal caribou (Rangifer tarandus), which inhabit remote regions, are widely dispersed, and exist at low densities. Fortunately, the recently developed ‘close-kin mark–recapture’ (CKMR) framework, which uses the number of kin pairs obtained within a sample to generate an abundance estimate, eliminates the need for multiple sampling events. As a result, some caribou managers are interested in using this method to generate an abundance estimate from a single, non-invasive sampling event for caribou populations. We conducted a simulation study using realistic boreal caribou demographic rates and population sizes to assess how population size and the proportion of the population surveyed impact the accuracy and precision of single-survey CKMR-based abundance estimates. Our results indicated that abundance estimates were biased and highly imprecise when very small proportions of the population were sampled, regardless of the population size. However, the larger the population size, the smaller the required proportion of the population surveyed to generate both accurate and reasonably precise estimates. Additionally, we also present a case study in which we used the CKMR framework to generate annual female abundance estimates for a small caribou population in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada, from 2006 to 2015 and compared them to existing published capture–mark–recapture-based estimates. Both the accuracy and precision of the annual CKMR-based abundance estimates varied across years and were sensitive to the proportion of pairwise kinship comparisons which yielded a mother–offspring pair. Taken together, our study demonstrates that it is possible to generate CKMR-based abundance estimates from a single sampling event for small caribou populations, so long as a sufficient sampling intensity can be achieved.