Literature review
To evaluate the prevailing approach to sugar glider baiting among
practitioners and variance in trapping outcomes, we performed a
meta-analytical review of the literature. We were particularly
interested in the types of baits used and in details of trap type and
position. A total of 140 publications were screened, and 35 involved
baiting for sugar gliders. Sixteen of these publications (comprising a
total of 26 unique studies) reported the count of individuals captured,
total captures or trap nights. We conducted a meta-analysis on these
data using the package ‘metafor’ v.3.8-1, (Viechtbauer,
2010) in R v.4.1.0 (R Core Team 2021) . We used log-transformed
incidence rates as the outcome measure to compare rates of unique
captures and trap success among studies. Heterogeneity across studies
was tested with a multi-meta-regression using incidence rate effect size
as the response outcome and numerous study moderators were investigated
(bait type, habitat connectivity, trap type, trap height, trap nights,
study year). Model averaging was used to ensure inference incorporated
model structure uncertainty, and was performed using the package
‘Mumln’ v. 1.43.17 (Barton, 2020) (please see Supporting
Information for full description of methods).