Understanding foraging flexibility in urban vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus , for the benefit of human-wildlife
- PDF / 560,937 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 54 Downloads / 149 Views
Understanding foraging flexibility in urban vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus pygerythrus, for the benefit of human-wildlife coexistence Harriet R. Thatcher 1,2,3
&
Colleen T. Downs 2
&
Nicola F. Koyama 1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Generalist wildlife species often thrive in urban environments because of increased anthropogenic resources. However, humanwildlife interactions, especially if negative, raise concerns for urban wildlife management. An enhanced understanding of wildlife behavioural flexibility has been suggested to be a key tool to provide educated and effective management strategies. We therefore investigated how availability of semi-naturally occurring food affected behavioural foraging patterns of urban vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), a generalist primate commonly found in urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Over one year, we conducted 20 min. focal animal observations recording foraging behaviour and food consumption. We used a combination of a generalised linear model and descriptive statistics to examine the relationship between anthropogenic food consumption and semi-natural food availability. Our analyses showed that anthropogenic food consumption decreased as semi-natural food availability increased. We also showed that increased aggression from humans towards vervet monkeys decreased time spent foraging on anthropogenic food. Our study highlights how vervet monkeys have adapted to their urban landscape, showing foraging flexibility in response to available food resources and the frequency of human interactions. We suggest how our results can be applied for management recommendations, particularly controlling anthropogenic food availability and decreasing negative human-wildlife interactions. Keywords Ethnoprimatology . Wildlife management . Human-wildlife interactions . Urban landscape
Introduction Due to increasing human populations, almost all wildlife today live in habitats that are altered to some degree by anthropogenic activities (Tilman et al. 2017). Generalist wildlife
* Harriet R. Thatcher [email protected] Colleen T. Downs [email protected] Nicola F. Koyama [email protected] 1
School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
2
Centre for Functional Biodiversity, School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, P/Bag X01, Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg 3209, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
3
Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
species often exploit urban environments because of increased anthropogenic resources (Lowry et al. 2013). Consequently the urban landscape is of particular concern for wildlife management because of increased wildlife abundance and humanwildlife interactions (McKinney 2002; Baker and Harris 2007). Understanding how an animal persists in an anthropogenically disturbed environment is imperative to provide guidance for human-wildlife cohabitation and reduce negative interactions (Dickman 2010; Nowak and Lee 2013; Hockings et al. 2015; Patter
Data Loading...
