Wildlife camera trapping: a review and recommendations for linking surveys to ecological processes

Burton and colleagues synthesized the rapidly expanding camera-trap literature, evaluating how studies define their sampling, handle detection, and connect raw detections to the ecological quantities researchers actually care about, such as abundance, occupancy, and behavior. They cautioned against naive use of detection rates as abundance indices without accounting for detection probability and survey design, and offered recommendations to strengthen inference and reporting. The review mapped methodological strengths and weaknesses across hundreds of studies, highlighting common pitfalls and best practices. By clarifying the chain from camera detections to ecological conclusions, it became one of the most influential and widely cited methodological reviews in the field, frequently used to justify analytical choices and improve study rigor.