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    STUDIA BIOLOGIA - Issue no. 2 / 2008  
         
  Article:   INCORPORATING OCCUPANCY MODELS IN DESIGNING STUDIES OF ANIMAL DISTRIBUTION: A GLIMPSE ON THE HABITAT USE OF AN AMPHIBIAN IN THE SAXON LANDSCAPES OF TRANSYLVANIA.

Authors:  TIBOR HARTEL, COSMIN IOAN MOGA. 		 
       
         
  Abstract:  The importance of occupancy models in studying the habitat use and distribution of organisms was only relatively recently emphasized. Their advantage is that allow to predict the site occupancy and at the same time to quantitatively estimate the detection probability of the studied organism. Here we apply for the first time in Romania these models on Hyla arborea, a locally and regionally common but threatened amphibian. 30 permanent ponds were studied in 2007 and 2008. Our results show that the detection probability is high (>0.7), and the differences between the found percentage of occupancy and predicted occupancy was small. However, the data not accounted for detection probability may underestimate the use of ponds containing predatory fish. According to the count data there is a sharp decline of H. arborea in these ponds, but the occupancy models predict no such decline, suggesting that some ponds with H. arborea were missed in 2008. The detection probability was positively related to the emergent vegetation cover in the ponds, but the effect of vegetation was stronger in 2007 than in 2008. We suggest the estimation of detectability on different sensitive species before their local – regional decline.

KEYWORDS: habitat, distribution, conservation, detection probability, Hyla arborea, Romania 		 
         
     
         
         
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