distribution of one year may serve as the prior distribution for the subsequent year making the

estimates of abundance more accurate progressively.

 Since, sloth bears are not likely to exist in numbers greater than 20 animals per home range

area, incorporating Royle and Nichols (2003) model into estimating occupancy rate (MacKenzie

et al., 2002) of sloth bears may be necessary. For a reasonable animal-specific detection

probability r, between 0.2 and 0.8, a great variation in the site-specific detection probability is

reflected for a range of abundances between 0 and 30. When the values of abundance are very

high (>30), the site-specific detection probability is less sensitive to the changes in abundance. I

recommend the use of the Royle and Nichols (2003) model to address any issue with respect to

occupancy of sloth bears as compared to the MacKenzie et al. (2002) model which implicitly

assumes that sites have a constant or nearly constant abundance.