Abstract
1. Conservation detection dogs (CDD) use their exceptional olfactory
abilities to assist a range of conservation projects. CDD are generally
quicker, can cover wider areas, and find more samples than humans and
other analytical tools. However, their efficacy varies between studies;
methodological standardisation in the field is lacking. Considering the
cost of deploying a CDD team and the limited financial resources within
conservation, it is vital that their performance is quantified and
reliable. This review aims to summarise what is currently known about
the use of detection dogs in conservation and elucidate which factors
affect efficacy. 2. We describe the efficacy of CDD across species and
situational contexts like training and field work. Reported
sensitivities (i.e., proportion of target samples found out of total
available) ranged from 23.8% to 100% and precision rates (i.e.,
proportion of alerts that are true positives) from 28% to 100%. CDD
are consistently shown to be better than other techniques, but
performance varies substantially across the literature. There is no
consistent difference in efficacy between training, testing, and field
work, hence we need to understand the factors affecting this. 3. We
highlight the key variables that alter CDD performance. External effects
include target odour, training methods, sample management, search
methodology and environment, and the CDD handler. Internal effects
include dog breed, personality, diet, age, and health. Unfortunately,
much of the research fails to provide adequate information on the dogs,
handlers, training, experience, and samples. This results in an
inability to determine precisely why an individual study has high or low
efficacy. 4. It is clear that CDD can be applied to possibly limitless
scenarios but moving forward researchers must provide more consistent
and detailed methodologies so that comparisons can be conducted, results
are more easily replicated, and progress can be made in standardising
CDD work.