Software for minimalistic data management in large camera trap studies

Krishnappa, Yathin S.; Turner, Wendy C.

doi:10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.06.004

Cited by 45 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…The use of remotely-triggered cameras (hereafter, camera traps) as a tool for studying wildlife populations is commonplace [1, 2]. Recent areas of research utilizing camera traps include studies of species distribution [3], community dynamics [4], population densities [5], and occupancy modeling [6–7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-Camera Trap Survey Designs Miss Detections: Impacts on Estimates of Occupancy and Community Metrics

2016

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The use of camera traps as a tool for studying wildlife populations is commonplace. However, few have considered how the number of detections of wildlife differ depending upon the number of camera traps placed at cameras-sites, and how this impacts estimates of occupancy and community composition. During December 2015–February 2016, we deployed four camera traps per camera-site, separated into treatment groups of one, two, and four camera traps, in southern Illinois to compare whether estimates of wildlife community metrics and occupancy probabilities differed among survey methods. The overall number of species detected per camera-site was greatest with the four-camera survey method (P<0.0184). The four-camera survey method detected 1.25 additional species per camera-site than the one-camera survey method, and was the only survey method to completely detect the ground-dwelling silvicolous community. The four-camera survey method recorded individual species at 3.57 additional camera-sites (P = 0.003) and nearly doubled the number of camera-sites where white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were detected compared to one- and two-camera survey methods. We also compared occupancy rates estimated by survey methods; as the number of cameras deployed per camera-site increased, occupancy estimates were closer to naïve estimates, detection probabilities increased, and standard errors of detection probabilities decreased. Additionally, each survey method resulted in differing top-ranked, species-specific occupancy models when habitat covariates were included. Underestimates of occurrence and misrepresented community metrics can have significant impacts on species of conservation concern, particularly in areas where habitat manipulation is likely. Having multiple camera traps per site revealed significant shortcomings with the common one-camera trap survey method. While we realize survey design is often constrained logistically, we suggest increasing effort to at least two camera traps facing opposite directions per camera-site in habitat association studies, and to utilize camera-trap arrays when restricted by equipment availability.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single-Camera Trap Survey Designs Miss Detections: Impacts on Estimates of Occupancy and Community Metrics

2016

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“…There are several tools currently in the market for managing camera trapping projects. They cover the spectrum from image management software such as PhotoSpread (Kandel, Paepcke, Theobald, Garcia‐Molina, & Abelson, ; Sundaresan, Riginos, & Abelson, ) and google photos/Picasa (Sundaresan et al., ), to desktop‐based applications such as Camera Base (Tobler, ) and Aardwolf (Krishnappa & Turner, ), as well as project‐specific software like TEAM Network (Fegraus et al., ; Jansen, Ahumada, Fegraus, & Obrien, ), eMammal (Forrester et al., ), camtrapR (Niedballa, Sollmann, Courtiol, & Wilting, ), CPW Photo Warehouse (Ivan & Newkirk, ), Wild.ID (https://github.com/ConservationInternational/Wild.ID) and Camelot (https://gitlab.com/camelot-project/camelot), all of which are intended for camera trap studies. There are also web applications built around citizen science projects such as Snapshot Serengeti (Swanson, Kosmala, Lintott, & Packer, ) and global camera trap data repositories such as Wildlife Insights (https://www.wildlifeinsights.org/).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

ViXeN: An open‐source package for managing multimedia data

Ramachandran

Devarajan

2017

Methods Ecol Evol

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There is a dearth of good toolkits to manage the different data formats that are associated with ecological datasets. In this paper, we describe a flexible, general‐purpose, easy‐to‐use, extensible, and open‐source toolkit that was built to manage an ecological study involving thousands of camera trap videos. ViXeN, the software package described here, can be used to view data files, including videos, images, audio files, portable document format (PDF) files, and text, in multiple formats. It can be used to annotate these data files, using metadata in the form of arbitrary user tags. The multimedia data catalogued, archived and extracted, using this software can easily be exported as a comma separated value file that can directly be used for data analysis. The software is capable of handling large datasets with up to a million files. Furthermore, ViXeN provides the option of additional customization by advanced users based on their particular requirements. We provide a case study involving more than 6,000 videos that were collected as part of a camera trap study involving mammalian carnivores to demonstrate some of the functionality of the software.

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“…It is for this reason that several useful 37 alternatives for specific or generic software have been proposed to handle photos taken by camera traps [7,9,8,6,10]. 38 We clearly recommend weighed considerations to be made before choosing or developing a new one.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…More recently, [6] concludes that the best alternative for projects with reduced budgets may well be to prepare Finally, a new development has been proposed by [10]. This software has already been tested in an important are not yet contemplated.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in camera trap data management tools: Towards collaborative development and integration with GIS

Zaragozí

Belda

Gimenez

et al. 2015

Ecological Informatics

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Camera traps have become a widely used technique for conducting biological inventories, generating a large number of database records of great interest. The main aim of this paper is to describe a new Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), developed to facilitate the management of camera trapped data originated in a protected Mediterranean area (SE Spain). In the last decade, some other useful alternatives have been proposed, but ours focuses especially on a collaborative undertaking and on the importance of spatial information underpinning common camera trap studies. This FOSS application, namely "Camera Trap Manager" (CTM), has been designed to expedite the processing of the pictures on the .NET platform. CTM has a very intuitive user interface, automatic extraction of some image metadata (date, time, moon phase, location, temperature, atmospheric pressure, among others), analytical (Geographical Information Systems, statistics, charts, among others) and reporting capabilities (ESRI Shapefiles, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets, PDF reports, among others). Using this application we have achieved a very simple management, fast analysis, and a significant reduction of costs. While we were able to classify an average of 55 pictures per hour manually, CTM has made it possible to process over 1,000 photographs per hour, consequently retrieving a greater amount of data.

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Software for minimalistic data management in large camera trap studies

Cited by 45 publications

References 8 publications

Single-Camera Trap Survey Designs Miss Detections: Impacts on Estimates of Occupancy and Community Metrics

Single-Camera Trap Survey Designs Miss Detections: Impacts on Estimates of Occupancy and Community Metrics

ViXeN: An open‐source package for managing multimedia data

Advances in camera trap data management tools: Towards collaborative development and integration with GIS

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