In “When to stop managing or surveying cryptic species,” Chades et al. present decision making tools for managers concerned with what conservation action to take. How long should you spend time, money and effort managing a species that might not even be there? Long story short managing is the best approach if it’s a high value species, but if management continues without any sign of a population, it’s worth switching your resources to surveying. If nothing shows up, move on. But before you do any of that, be sure to use a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process to know when those benchmarks occur.

Chades, I. et al. When to stop managing or surveying cryptic threatened species. PNAS, in press. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.080526510)

How do you estimate the population size of a highly abundant species, like the Magellanic penguin? Systematic surveys or complete censuses traditionally. Villanueva simulated a colony spatially by interpolating survey data (counts from circular plots) across the study site. She then tested various survey methods against the simulation to assess their accuracy. In this way, she can estimate the costs and benefits of different surveying methods and effort. For this site, systematic sampling was the most accurate. What a nice way of analyzing an important question.