Mammalian Biology 78 (2013) 226–230 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Mammalian Biology jou rn al hom epa ge : www.elsevier.com/locate/mambio Short Communication Latrine survey as a method to estimate the population size of Arabian gazelles (Gazella arabica) Torsten Wronski a,b,∗ , M. Zafar-ul Islam c , Martin Plath d a Zoological Society of London, Conservation Programs, Regent’s Park, London NW1 4RY, United Kingdom b King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre, Saudi Wildlife Authority, P.O. Box 61681, Riyadh 11575, Saudi Arabia c National Wildlife Research Centre, Saudi Wildlife Authority, P.O. Box 1086, Taif, Saudi Arabia d Department of Ecology & Evolution, University of Frankfurt, Max-von-Laue-Str. 13, D-60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 11 March 2012 Accepted 31 July 2012 Available online 5 September 2012 Keywords: Population estimate Localised defecation Road strip count Desert ungulate Habitat fragmentation a b s t r a c t Arabian gazelle (Gazella arabica) populations have been decimated in most parts of their original range. As a cryptic, crepuscular species, Arabian gazelles are difficult to observe, rendering monitoring programs for conservation purposes a challenging endeavour. Latrine mapping has been suggested as an effective, time- and cost-efficient tool to survey and estimate the abundance of gazelles in remote areas with low population densities. In the present study we collected data from five populations in Saudi Arabia to address the question of how population estimates can be inferred from such latrine counts and uncovered a non-linear relationship between both variables. Methodologies applied during the five surveys differed between study sites, so caution is required when interpreting our data. Still, given the immediate threat to the survival of the species, there is an urgent need to establish a time- and cost-efficient sampling method that will be vital for the conservation of remnant pockets of natural populations and for the proclamation of new protected areas in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East, and the present data are the only available source of information in this context. © 2012 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Scientific monitoring is an integral part of wildlife management and forms an empirical basis for the proclamation of protected areas (Child and Grainger, 1990), for determining harvesting quota (Strickland et al., 1994; Averbeck, 2001; Stalling et al., 2002), or to assess habitat degradation (Truett et al., 2005) and wildlife dam- age (VerCauteren et al., 2005). Techniques to monitor free-ranging populations differ vastly according to the species under considera- tion and the habitat type/landscape unit in which the survey is to be conducted (Western and Grimsdell, 1979). Also monetary and time constraints will need to be considered when developing sus- tainable mid- to long-term monitoring programs. In many cases, this means that monitoring accuracy inevitably will be lower than theoretically possible, simply because limits to the effort spent per survey prevent in-depth monitoring (Norton-Griffiths, 1978). It lies in the very nature of applied conservation biology that there is often an immediate need for action, so methods for esti- mating population sizes will need to rely on the best existing data, even if sample sizes are low. In the present paper we report on just such a case, where only five data points are available allowing for ∗ Corresponding author at: King Khalid Wildlife Research Centre, Saudi Wildlife Authority, P.O. Box 61681, Riyadh 11575, Saudi Arabia. Tel.: +966 054 50 41 286; fax: +966 1 40 11 527. E-mail address: t wronski@gmx.de (T. Wronski). the deduction of a method to calculate population sizes from sur- veys of localised defecation sites (latrines; Lunt et al., 2006; Van Vliet et al., 2007) in a threatened ungulate (for discussion of prob- lems associated with suboptimal sampling effort see El Alqamy, 2011). Latrine surveys in our target species, the Arabian gazelle (Gazella arabica), are far less time-consuming than direct census counts, so the question of how population size estimates can be obtained through latrine counts is timely and pressing, particu- larly because there is currently an urgent need for monitoring a large number of protected areas or areas with presumed remnant populations in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East (Thouless et al., 1991; Mallon and Kingswood, 2001). Until recently, the Arabian gazelle (G. arabica) was thought to be synonymous to its ecologically and behaviourally very similar sister species, the mountain gazelle (G. gazella) occurring on the Lev- ant (Wronski et al. 2010; Lerp et al. in press). Historically, Arabian gazelles occurred across most of the Arabian Peninsula, but during the past five decades population sizes have decreased in many parts of their distribution range, mainly due to direct human pursuit in the form of fire arm-based hunting or live capture for private use, as well as increasing population fragmentation (Ghandour, 1989; Nader, 1989; Thouless et al., 1991; Magin and Greth, 1994; Strauss et al., 2009; Mallon and Kingswood, 2001). The IUCN Red List cur- rently ranks ‘G. gazella’ as vulnerable (A2ad; IUCN, 2011). In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia only few, scattered natural populations 1616-5047/$ – see front matter © 2012 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Säugetierkunde. Published by Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2012.07.158