Introduction: The Conservation Issue
1. Large ungulates are major ecological drivers shaping the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. However, they are also a highly vulnerable group of mammals because of increasing human impacts in the form of hunting, habitat loss and degra
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Introduction: The Conservation Issue
Abstract
1. Large ungulates are major ecological drivers shaping the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. However, they are also a highly vulnerable group of mammals because of increasing human impacts in the form of hunting, habitat loss and degradation. 2. In view of the general decline of wild ungulates worldwide, and more specifically in tropical forests, there is an urgent need for rigorous assessments of population statuses of tropical forest ungulate species, as well as evaluations of drivers of their declines in order to make timely and informed conservation decisions. 3. In this monograph, we provide an overarching modeling framework and develop a set of specific methods required for rigorous analyses of ungulate populations. We also demonstrate their practical application by investigating spatial variation in ungulate abundance patterns and their key determinants in the case of five large, sympatric tropical forest ungulates in southwestern India. 4. This chapter provides the conservation context in which such understanding of ungulate-habitat relationships is necessary for the conduct of informed management. We also elaborate on specific environmental, logistical and statistical challenges involved in our macro-ecological field investigation. 5. The detailed prior information on the study landscape and a synthesis of current knowledge on biology and conservation issues affecting the study species are used for the formulation of a priori hypotheses about the drivers of wild ungulate abundance patterns in tropical forest systems. These hypotheses are tested by appropriately designed confrontations of plausible models against survey data in the subsequent chapters of this monograph.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 N. S. Kumar et al., Spatial Dynamics and Ecology of Large Ungulate Populations in Tropical Forests of India, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6934-0_1
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1 Introduction: The Conservation Issue
General Overview
Ungulates are hoofed mammals adapted to a terrestrial, herbivorous life with fast locomotion (Macdonald 2001). They are distributed worldwide (except Australia and Antarctica) and exhibit a remarkable diversity of body sizes ranging from the 1-kg chevrotains to the 3-tonne hippopotamuses. Their diet is varied, including leaves, grasses, flowers, fruits and seeds of trees, herbs, roots, tubers and even insects and flesh. Consequently, their habitats occur in a wide variety of biomes ranging from desert, grassland, tundra to forests of various types. Living ungulate species are represented by 13 families, 95 genera and 257 species worldwide (Wilson and Reeder 2005). They constitute about 80% of all the terrestrial mammalian species with body mass of over 50 kg (Macdonald 2001). Ungulates are among the major ecological drivers shaping the structure and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems (Duncan et al. 2006; Terborgh et al. 2008). St
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