Permeability of Neotropical agricultural lands to a key native ungulate—Are well‐connected forests important?

Abstract

Much of what remains of the Earth's tropical forests is embedded within agricultural landscapes, where forest is reduced and fragmented. As native forest ungulates are critical to maintaining forest function, it is imperative to understand how this functional group responds to declines in forest cover and connectivity resulting from agricultural expansion. We addressed this issue by evaluating selection of forest cover and forest connectivity by a key native ungulate of Neotropical forests, the white‐lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari Link 1795, Tayassuidae, Cetartiodactyla), in agricultural landscapes of Brazil. We evaluated selection using compositional analysis at two hierarchical levels, landscape, and home range. From 2013 to 2019, we GPS‐tracked eight white‐lipped peccary herds in Southwest Brazil, resulting in a total of 14,460 GPS locations. We found that herds can live in landscapes with a wide range of forest cover (35%–81% of home ranges covered by native forest), with significant, but not strong, selection at the landscape level (p = .045). Nevertheless, herds strongly select for forest cover within their home ranges (81%–97% of locations within native forest; highly significant selection at the home‐range level: p = .008). As for connectivity, herds significantly select the largest, most connected forest fragments at the landscape level (p = .04), but not at the home‐range level (p = .07). Our results support that Neotropical forests within agricultural landscapes need to be well connected in order to preserve this key native ungulate and maintain long‐term forest function. Abstract in Portuguese is available with online material.

Dietary expansion facilitates the persistence of a large frugivore in fragmented tropical forests

“…In the Atlantic Forest, most remaining forest fragments are considered too small to support viable populations of whitelipped peccaries (Keuroghlian et al 2012). Although the species has a strong preference for areas with high forest cover (Jorge et al 2021) and habitat diversity (Keuroghlian & Eaton, 2008b), it can occur in forest fragments as small as 500 ha (Jorge et al 2013). Some small forest fragments (500-2000 ha) might still retain relatively high habitat quality and/or diversity, and white-lipped peccaries might be able to capitalize on such variety of resources, including non-forest C 4 resources, shifting their diets from those observed on continuous forests.…”

“…Here we compare the diet of a large forest-dwelling ungulate, the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), between populations inhabiting continuous and fragmented forests by using stable isotope analysis. White-lipped peccaries are strongly associated with high forest cover (Jorge et al 2021) and are mainly frugivorous (Keuroghlian & Eaton, 2008a;Desbiez et al 2009;Keuroghlian et al, 2009), but sometimes are seen raiding crops (Lima et al 2019). The white-lipped peccary is considered a key frugivore species in Neotropical forests, affecting forest diversity, structure and function (Beck, 2006;Villar et al 2020Villar et al , 2021, and it is considered vulnerable across its distribution range (Keuroghlian et al 2013).…”

“…White‐lipped peccaries are strongly associated with high forest cover (Jorge et al . 2021) and are mainly frugivorous (Keuroghlian & Eaton, 2008a; Desbiez et al . 2009; Keuroghlian et al., 2009), but sometimes are seen raiding crops (Lima et al .…”

Seasonal space use and habitat selection in magpie geese: implications for reducing human‐wildlife conflicts

“…In addition, we used minimum convex polygons (MCP; Mohr 1947) to define the boundaries of individual activity areas for habitat selection analyses. We selected the MCP method because it is a direct, non‐probabilistic estimator of space use (Jorge et al 2020). Following similar habitat selection studies (Mallord et al 2018, Jorge et al 2020, Pang et al 2020), we used all GPS detections (MCP 100%) to be most representative of the habitat available to geese within their range.…”

“…We selected the MCP method because it is a direct, non‐probabilistic estimator of space use (Jorge et al 2020). Following similar habitat selection studies (Mallord et al 2018, Jorge et al 2020, Pang et al 2020), we used all GPS detections (MCP 100%) to be most representative of the habitat available to geese within their range. We calculated MCP from individual trajectories using the as.ltraj and mcp functions (Calenge 2006), and exported them as shapefiles using the R package raster (Hijmans 2020) to clip the habitat layer in ArcGIS 10.4 (Esri, Redlands, CA, USA).…”