Implications of improving resighting estimates
Understanding the reason for the non-detection of species is crucial to make behavioral and ecological inferences. In our study, HSV increased the resighting rate substantially in A. junius but not R. multicolor . This means that in the former species the marked individuals were present at the site but the observers were not able to detect them with the naked eye (false negative), whereas in the latter species the low resighting rate under both CV and CV+HSV was likely due to the absence of the individuals at the site. This interspecific difference in resighting rate is probably due to the difference in adult behavior where R. multicolor might be more dispersive thanA. junius (Conrad, Willson, Harvey, Thomas, & Sherratt, 1999). Furthermore, our analysis of A. junius capture history showed that HSV might reveal sexual differences in resighting rates that could not be detected by CV. This discrepancy may lead to erroneous inferences about species behaviour and the dismissal of sexual differences in species movement and habitat use (Stoks, 2001; Fujiwara, Anderson, Neubert, & Caswell, 2006). Moreover, exhaustive estimates of resighting rates may provide more power to detect traits that drives reproductive success in particular and evolution in general. In many insects, single individuals rarely land in breeding sites, whereas breeding pairs perch to copulate and lay eggs. This behavioral difference between breeding and non-breeding individuals poses a challenge for researchers interested in characterizing the fitness landscape and identifying how trait values correlate with fitness. Also, since resighting rate is an important component in demographic models, enhancing the estimation of resighting rates may lead to a more accurate evaluation of population size (Tufto et al., 2012), and ultimately to more effective management of wild populations (Hammill & Clements, 2020). Therefore, the improvement of our estimates of resighting rates by HSV might resolve many issues when addressing ecological, conservation, and evolutionary questions.