Hunting or habitat degradation? Decline of primate populations in Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania: An analysis of threats

Rovero, Francesco; Mtui, Arafat S.; Kitegile, Amani; Nielsen, Martin Reinhardt

doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.09.017

Cited by 80 publications

(145 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…How sustainable this activity is has been subject to much debate (Fa et al 2002;Levi et al 2011;Shepard et al 2012), as the ability to detect overarching patterns is complicated by uncertainties about the life history traits of commonly-hunted species (Bowler et al 2014), variation in their dispersal rates, and the availability of nearby un-hunted areas that can replenish prey stocks in areas that are exploited (Shepard et al 2012). Nevertheless, there are cases where the presence of hunting has been shown to be a more powerful predictor of mammal abundance than forest type and other extractive activities such as logging (de Thoisy et al 2005;Marshall et al 2006;Rovero et al 2012), and population declines and extirpations of taxa that are popular prey have been commonly recorded in forests surrounding settlements (Peres 1990(Peres , 2000Cullen et al 2000;Nuñez-Iturri and Howe 2007;Zapata-Ríos et al 2009;Rosin and Swamy 2013). Forests that have been subject to heavy hunting tend to have significantly less vertebrate biomass and fewer individuals of largebodied species, particularly tapirs (Tapirus terrestris and Tapirus bairdii), white-lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari), ateline monkeys, tinamous, curassows and trumpeters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A pan-neotropical analysis of hunting preferences

Preziosi

Sellers

2017

Biodivers Conserv

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Hunting in the neotropics is a widespread form of resource extraction. However, there is increasing concern that current activities are leading to the decline and extirpation of vulnerable species; particulary ateline primates, large ungulates (such as tapirs and white-lipped peccaries) and large birds such as curassows. Hunting patterns are expected to be a product of two principal influences: the value of return for a given amount of effort invested into hunting, and cultural factors that determine the prestige and usefulness of prey. Previous work has suggested that hunting profiles change in a predictable way over time, becoming more diverse and more dependent on smaller bodied species as preferred, large-bodied prey become scarcer. In this paper, we evaluate the hunting profiles of 78 neotropical communities in Central and South America. We investigate the uniformity of species preferences, whether communities that are geographically closer have similar hunting profiles, and whether the age and size of settlements can be used to predict the type and diversity of species targeted. We found that there was only a weak correlation between the structure of communities' hunting profiles and their geographical proximity. Neither a community's size nor age was a good predictor of the shape and structure of its hunting profile. Our data suggest that either the availability of prey or the cultural influences 123Biodivers Conserv (2017) 26:1877-1897 DOI 10.1007/s10531-017-1334 dictating the value of different species can change rapidly over small distances, and that older and larger settlements do not impact prey species distributions in a predictable way.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A pan-neotropical analysis of hunting preferences

Preziosi

Sellers

2017

Biodivers Conserv

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“…They are sensitive to habitat degradation as they have a specialized diet; they are also extremely vulnerable to hunting as they live in large social groups (up to 460-70 individuals) (Marshall et al, 2010, Rovero et al, 2012. They have a long generation time (6-8 years), making recoveries from population declines relatively slow.…”

Section: Study System-site and Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They are thus of critical importance to the Eastern Afromontane Biodiversity Hotspot. Although the forests within the Udzungwas were most likely connected to one another at some point in the past, they are currently fragmented into numerous blocks owing to a combination of natural factors (for example, geology, climate, terrain morphology, aspect) and human disturbance (for example, subsistence and commercial logging, pole cutting, agriculture, bushfires) (Dinesen et al, 2001;Struhsaker et al, 2004;Marshall et al, 2010;Rovero et al, 2012). These blocks vary widely in size, shape, altitudinal range, type of forest and protection level (Figure 1; Supplementary Table S1).…”

Section: Study System-site and Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A novel landscape genetic approach demonstrates the effects of human disturbance on the Udzungwa red colobus monkey (Procolobus gordonorum)

et al. 2015

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A comprehensive understanding of how human disturbance affects tropical forest ecosystems is critical for the mitigation of future losses in global biodiversity. Although many genetic studies of tropical forest fragmentation have been conducted to provide insight into this issue, relatively few have incorporated landscape data to explicitly test the effects of human disturbance on genetic differentiation among populations. In this study, we use a newly developed landscape genetic approach that relies on a genetic algorithm to simultaneously optimize resistance surfaces to investigate the effects of human disturbance in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, which is an important part of a universally recognized biodiversity hotspot. Our study species is the endangered Udzungwa red colobus monkey (Procolobus gordonorum), which is endemic to the Udzungwa Mountains and a known indicator species that thrives in large and well-protected blocks of old growth forest. Population genetic analyses identified significant population structure among Udzungwa red colobus inhabiting different forest blocks, and Bayesian cluster analyses identified hierarchical structure. Our new method for creating composite landscape resistance models found that the combination of fire density on the landscape and distance to the nearest village best explains the genetic structure observed. These results demonstrate the effects that human activities are having in an area of high global conservation priority and suggest that this ecosystem is in a precarious state. Our study also illustrates the ability of our novel landscape genetic method to detect the impacts of relatively recent landscape features on a long-lived species.

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“…Hunting has been shown to be the major driver of the decline and extirpation of the mammalian abundance in human impacted areas around the world (Hill et al 1997, Naughton-Treves et al 2003, Rist et al 2009, Levi et al 2009, Pillay et al 2011, Rovero et al 2012. In the neotropics, T. pecari was one of the first to disappear due to its extreme sensitivity to hunting in areas close to human settlements (Peres 1996, Reyna-Hurtado and Tunner 2007, Naranjo and Bodmer 2007, Meyer et al 2015, Reina-Hurtado et al 2015.…”

Section: Determinants Of the Structure Of The Mammalian Assemblagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Studies in South America, India, and Africa (Hill et al 1997, Naughton-Treves et al 2003, Rist et al 2009, Levi et al 2009, Pillay et al 2011, Rovero et al 2012 have shown that deforestation and hunting have been the major drivers of mammalian assemblages decline and ultimately mass extinction (Mendes Pontes et al 2016). This can change the overall composition of the assemblage, but can be attenuated by the presence of a continuous forest matrix, which allows an efficient source-sink balance with recolonization of the depleted areas, such as in southeastern Peru (Ohl-Schacherer et al 2007), and Ecuadorian Amazonia (Zapata-Rios et al 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terrestrial mammal assemblages in protected and human impacted areas in Northern Brazilian Amazonia

Luna¹,

Reyes²,

Lucena³

et al. 2017

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Mammal communities in the vicinity of human settlements are often subject to subsistence hunting and retaliatory killings. We used fourteen digital camera traps equipped with infrared triggers to sample the medium-sized and large mammal communities for ca. 34 (±1.64) days per site. Diversity was measured as both Shannon entropy and Fager´s number of moves (NMS), and dominance was quantified using the Berger-Parker index. We used Kruskall-Wallis tests to investigate if there were statistically significant differences in richness, diversity and dominance among the sites. At an overall sampling effort of 1,946 trap days we recorded 216 independent observations of a total of 20 species belonging to 17 genera and 15 families. Richness and diversity appeared to be determined by forest structure, since, independent of the level of human impact, the richest areas were those closest to the ombrophilous forests of southern Guyana shield, closest to central Amazonia, whereas the poorest were at those sites closest to the vegetation mosaics of central Guyana shield. The disappearance of Tayassu pecari from the impacted areas as well as higher relative abundances in the protected areas, albeit not significant, foresees a possible bleak future for the mammalian assemblages in the near future.

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Hunting or habitat degradation? Decline of primate populations in Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania: An analysis of threats

Cited by 80 publications

References 40 publications

A pan-neotropical analysis of hunting preferences

A pan-neotropical analysis of hunting preferences

A novel landscape genetic approach demonstrates the effects of human disturbance on the Udzungwa red colobus monkey (Procolobus gordonorum)

Terrestrial mammal assemblages in protected and human impacted areas in Northern Brazilian Amazonia

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