Camera trapping contributes limitedly to supplementing point count surveys of bird species richness in a highly threatened tropical forest

<p>Increasing temporal and spatial coverage of bird inventories is urgent in changing tropical ecosystems. Camera trapping, traditionally focused on surveying mammals, has been pointed out as a potential tool to complement standard bird surveys. However, few standard bird surveys and camera trapping comparisons have been made in tropical biodiversity hotspots. We conducted camera trapping and point count surveys of bird species in eighteen 1 km² landscape units along a deforestation gradient in the Lacandon forest in México. We compared the two methods based on the estimates they produced of bird species richness, composition, body mass, and conservation status. We recorded 2.6 times more species by point counts than by camera trapping. There was no correlation between the number of species recorded by the two methods, and the similarity in species composition was low. Body mass was higher in species recorded by camera trapping only in medium levels of deforestation. Camera trapping has little potential to replace standard bird survey methods, such as point counts, for documenting bird species diversity. However, in some circumstances, it can be a valuable tool to help document the presence of some bird species by monitoring them throughout the day.</p>