Primate resilience in an anthropogenic landscape

Abstract

The resilience of neotropical primates in anthropogenic landscapes depends on the connectivity among forest patches, their movement capacity in different vegetation structures, and their responses to varying resource availability, competition level, and human impact. For some primate species, such as the endangered Black Lion Tamarin (BLT - Leontopithecus chrysopygus), that are rare and difficult to detect in the field, gathering this kind of data on many populations is challenging. However, the development of new technologies, such as Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM), remote sensing, canopy camera traps, and GPS coupled with accelerometers can help to overcome these challenges. Through three Work Packages (WP), we intend to estimate the resilience of the BLT in an anthropogenic landscape by estimating BLT landscape requirements, gene flow, health status, competition abilities, travel costs and movement decisions in different environmental contexts. In WP1, we aim at 1) determining the local and landscape metrics predicting the presence of BLT using PAM and remote sensing tools; 2) evaluating the health status of BLT groups; and 3) understanding the level of connectivity between BLT populations through gene flow. In WP2, we aim at understanding the ecological niche partitioning of the BLT and the three co-occurring primate species in a future climate refuge through the study of space (using PAM) and resource use (using canopy camera trap monitoring in fruiting trees). In WP3, we aim at 1) determining how the variation of vegetation structure affects the energy expenditure of BLTs across the landscape through GPS coupled to tri-axial accelerometers; and 2) determining the factors driving BLT decision making process in route planning. (AU)