Aerial surveys of elephants and other mammals may underestimate numbers
Monday, October 31, 2016 - 12:01
in Biology & Nature
As lead researchers in Africa's recent Great Elephant Census, wildlife ecologists Curtice Griffin and Scott Schlossberg at the University of Massachusetts Amherst also evaluated elephant counting methods in the wild. In a paper this month in PLOS ONE, authors suggest that the two main census methods now in use may be undercounting elephants and that population estimates from both are biased low.