Assessing Tricolored Bat Acoustic Monitoring for Regulatory Purposes in Relation to Reproductive Period, Cover Type, and Presence of Eastern Red Bats
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) allows use of acoustical surveys and automated identification software to determine the presence of the proposed endangered tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus). Analytical software is required to assess the probability of species absence on a sitenight basis using a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) that accounts for interspecific misclassification rates. The current standard for occupancy determination is a returned MLE P-value ≤0.05 at the nightly level irrespective of the number of files identified as tricolored bats. For this species, MLE P...