Identifying declining and threatened species with museum data Original Research Article

Methods for inferring threat from scientific collections were tested using museum records of marsupials and monotremes in south-west Western Australia. A modification of Solowʹs equation is presented that accounts for changes in collection effort. A runs test, sensitive to runs of zeroes anywhere in the collection record, was only marginally useful for identifying declining and threatened species. The two forms of Solowʹs equation, a trend analysis based on rank correlation, and a partial trend analysis to account for changes in collection effort, appeared the most promising of the methods tested. The results demonstrated that the use of these methods to infer threat may be useful when expert opinion is limited or not available. In conjunction with other relevant information, it appears that the methods can help to prioritise species on the basis of relative levels of threat.