Figure - available from: Movement Ecology
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Map of the golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli) range within the Loky-Manambato Protected Area in northeastern Madagascar, as indicated in the box on the inset of Madagascar. Different shades of green indicate the three main forest types and hatched black lines indicate the three forest fragments surveyed: dry (light green, Solaniampilana), moderate (green, Bekaroaka), and wet (dark green, Binara). The thin orange line depicts the unpaved national road in the region
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Background
Wildlife conservation often focuses on establishing protected areas. However, these conservation zones are frequently established without adequate knowledge of the movement patterns of the species they are designed to protect. Understanding movement and foraging patterns of species in dynamic and diverse habitats can allow managers to de...
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In mammals, olfactory communication plays an essential role in territorial and mating dynamics. Scent depositions in various species, including lemurs, can be placed via marking or overmarking (marking over previous depositions). We focused on the role that marking and overmarking play in territorial defence and intrasexual competition. We investig...
Citations
... These modifications can occur due to changes in forest structure, composition, or resource availability, which may alter the spatial distribution or quality of habitats critical for lemur populations. Studying the movement and foraging behaviors of species in varied and changing habitats enables managers to create more effective conservation strategies (Semel et al., 2022), because species often respond differently to factors such as seasonality, habitat characteristics, and anthropogenic pressures (Berger-Tal et al., 2016). Although our knowledge of lemurs' movement is somehow limited, some studies showed dietary flexibility and species abundance as key factors shaping species adaptation to environmental and thus habitat changes (Erhart et al., 2018;Herrera et al., 2018). ...
... The spatial distribution of food has driven the evolution of animal movement patterns (Nathan, 2008). Familiarity with the location of resources allows animals to optimize their search behaviour and establish efficient routes within and between resource patches for optimum exploitation (Schreier & Grove, 2021;Semel et al., 2022). Species with abundant and uniformly distributed food resources show a random (Brownian) movement pattern (Vishwanathan et al., 2011). ...
The spatial distribution of food shapes animal movement patterns, enabling them to optimize search behaviour and establish efficient routes for resource exploitation. Anthropogenic alteration of primate habitats, fragments available resources, and increases dependency on human food. The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) exhibits a broad spectrum of habitat preferences, encompassing both natural and human-altered landscapes. We studied how these preferences influence ranging behaviour in synanthropic macaques. We studied two similar-sized synanthropic rhesus macaque groups in a 16 km² suburban area in Dehradun, India. We tagged an adult female from each group with a GPS-GSM logger, recording fixes at 15-min intervals during the summer (April–June) and monsoon (July–August) of 2022. We investigated ranging patterns, habitat selection (via integrated step selection analysis, which models animal movement and habitat preference by analysing step choices based on current location and habitat characteristics), site fidelity, and movement strategy (via evaluation of consecutive step lengths) of the macaques during these two seasons based on the logged GPS coordinates during this period. Overall, the home and core ranges were small. The mean total distance covered diurnally was ~5–8 times the mean of the shortest distance between the first and last location diurnally. The macaques showed a strong preference for roadside and human habitation. Both individuals showed high site fidelity. Both individuals used a strategy of short intensive searches followed by long directed movements. The preference for anthropogenic sites and site fidelity along habitat edges shows recurrent movement to human dumpsites and houses, followed by return trips to preferred refuges. The overall movement strategy of these macaques in human-modified landscapes involved travel between clustered foraging and resting sites, reflecting an adaptive response to spatially fragmented resources and highlighting how resource distribution influences search efficiency and route optimization. This movement pattern may reinforce perceptions of heightened agonistic interactions among humans and influence the long-term dynamics of human-macaque coexistence.
... Determining which factors drive variation in primate population densities is critical for conservation activities. For example, in Madagascar's lemurs, densities of species in the genus Propithecus may be highly variable and have been shown to be related to resource availability and quality (Banks, 2015), distance to roads and forest edge effects (Kun-Rodrigues et al., 2014;Semel et al., 2022a), and proximity to rivers (Kun-Rodrigues et al., 2014;Salmona et al., 2014a). Given the variability in the driver of population densities in primates, it is important to gather population-specific data and to take care in applying inferences across species or even distinct populations. ...
... We oriented transects in a straight line toward the forest interior or followed some forested corridor along a streambed if a straight line could not be safely followed. We spaced transects > 630 m apart to avoid double counting (i.e., 1.5 × the radius of the largest observed home range (31.6 ha); Semel et al., 2022a). Two-member teams walked each transect every morning (0600-0830 h) and afternoon (1500-1730 h) for 4-10 days (mean = 6.7 days) in each study unit during each year that we sampled the study unit (Online Resource 1). ...
Animal abundance is determined by a number of factors, including vegetation structure, food availability and quality, human activities, predation risk, and disease. Vegetation structure, food availability, and human activity often are used to guide conservation efforts, such as protected area zoning and reforestation, especially for primates. We sought to determine whether Critically Endangered golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli) densities could be predicted across a heterogeneous landscape as a function of vegetation structure, food availability, and human activity. We conducted walking transect surveys across the sifakas’ entire global range in Loky-Manambato Protected Area of Madagascar from 2016–2018, expanding upon a study conducted in 2006/2008. Potential predictors of sifaka density included metrics of vegetation structure (e.g., tree density, forest type), food availability (e.g., food tree basal area, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)), and human activity (e.g., tree cutting, livestock grazing). Low-intensity tree cutting and wet season NDVI were the best, positive predictors of sifaka densities. Sifaka densities within study units across their restricted range (880 km²) were highly variable (range: 6.8–78.1 sifakas/km²), emphasizing the importance of large-scale study designs across all suitable land cover types for assessing a species’ abundance, regardless of its area of occupancy. We estimated that 10,222–12,631 sifakas remain. Based on previous surveys, this indicates that populations either remained stable over the past 20 years or have declined by 30–43% in the past 10 years; we argue that a decline is most likely based on our updating of forest cover estimates for both of the prior studies. We also found that wet season NDVI is a positive predictor of sifaka densities, which will aid managers in prioritizing conservation actions in this region using widely available remotely sensed data.
