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BatCount: A software program to count moving animals

One of the biggest challenges with species conservation is collecting accurate and efficient information on population sizes, especially from species that are difficult to count. Bats worldwide are declining due to disease, habitat destruction, and climate change, and many species lack reliable popu...

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Autores principales: Bentley, Ian, Kuczynska, Vona, Eddington, Valerie M., Armstrong, Mike, Kloepper, Laura N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10019661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36928828
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278012
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author Bentley, Ian
Kuczynska, Vona
Eddington, Valerie M.
Armstrong, Mike
Kloepper, Laura N.
author_facet Bentley, Ian
Kuczynska, Vona
Eddington, Valerie M.
Armstrong, Mike
Kloepper, Laura N.
author_sort Bentley, Ian
collection PubMed
description One of the biggest challenges with species conservation is collecting accurate and efficient information on population sizes, especially from species that are difficult to count. Bats worldwide are declining due to disease, habitat destruction, and climate change, and many species lack reliable population information to guide management decisions. Current approaches for estimating population sizes of bats in densely occupied colonies are time-intensive, may negatively impact the population due to disturbance, and/or have low accuracy. Research-based video tracking options are rarely used by conservation or management agencies for animal counting due to the perceived training and elevated operating costs. In this paper, we present BatCount, a free software program created in direct consultation with end-users designed to automatically count bats emerging from cave roosts (historical populations 20,000–250,000) with a streamlined and user-friendly interface. We report on the software package and provide performance metrics for different recording habitat conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that BatCount is an efficient and reliable option for counting bats in flight, with performance hundreds of times faster than manual counting, and has important implications for range- and species-wide population monitoring. Furthermore, this software can be extended to count any organisms moving across a camera including birds, mammals, fish or insects.
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spelling pubmed-100196612023-03-17 BatCount: A software program to count moving animals Bentley, Ian Kuczynska, Vona Eddington, Valerie M. Armstrong, Mike Kloepper, Laura N. PLoS One Research Article One of the biggest challenges with species conservation is collecting accurate and efficient information on population sizes, especially from species that are difficult to count. Bats worldwide are declining due to disease, habitat destruction, and climate change, and many species lack reliable population information to guide management decisions. Current approaches for estimating population sizes of bats in densely occupied colonies are time-intensive, may negatively impact the population due to disturbance, and/or have low accuracy. Research-based video tracking options are rarely used by conservation or management agencies for animal counting due to the perceived training and elevated operating costs. In this paper, we present BatCount, a free software program created in direct consultation with end-users designed to automatically count bats emerging from cave roosts (historical populations 20,000–250,000) with a streamlined and user-friendly interface. We report on the software package and provide performance metrics for different recording habitat conditions. Our analysis demonstrates that BatCount is an efficient and reliable option for counting bats in flight, with performance hundreds of times faster than manual counting, and has important implications for range- and species-wide population monitoring. Furthermore, this software can be extended to count any organisms moving across a camera including birds, mammals, fish or insects. Public Library of Science 2023-03-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10019661/ /pubmed/36928828 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278012 Text en https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) public domain dedication.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bentley, Ian
Kuczynska, Vona
Eddington, Valerie M.
Armstrong, Mike
Kloepper, Laura N.
BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title_full BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title_fullStr BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title_full_unstemmed BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title_short BatCount: A software program to count moving animals
title_sort batcount: a software program to count moving animals
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10019661/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36928828
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278012
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