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Chimpanzees in an Anthropogenic Landscape: Examining Food Resources across Habitat Types at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa

Bryson-Morrison, Nicola, Matsuzawa, Tetsuro, Humle, Tatyana (2016) Chimpanzees in an Anthropogenic Landscape: Examining Food Resources across Habitat Types at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa. American Journal of Primatology, 78 (12). pp. 1237-1249. ISSN 0275-2565. E-ISSN 1098-2345. (doi:10.1002/ajp.22578) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:57222)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22578

Abstract

Many primate populations occur outside protected areas in fragmented anthropogenic landscapes. Empirical data on the ecological characteristics that define an anthropogenic landscape are urgently required if conservation initiatives in such environments are to succeed. The main objective of our study was to determine the composition and availability of chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) food resources across fine spatial scales in the anthropogenic landscape of Bossou, Guinea, West Africa. We examined food resources in all habitat types available in the chimpanzees’ core area. We surveyed resource composition, structure and heterogeneity (20 m × 20 m quadrats, N = 54) and assessed temporal availability of food from phenology trails (total distance 5951 m; 1073 individual trees) over 1 year (2012–2013). Over half of Bossou consists of regenerating forest and is highly diverse in terms of chimpanzee food species; large fruit bearing trees are rare and confined to primary and riverine forest. Moraceae (mulberries and figs) was the dominant family, trees of which produce drupaceous fruits favored by chimpanzees. The oil palm occurs at high densities throughout and is the only species found in all habitat types except primary forest. Our data suggest that the high densities of oil palm and fig trees, along with abundant terrestrial herbaceous vegetation and cultivars, are able to provide the chimpanzees with widely available resources, compensating for the scarcity of large fruit trees. A significant difference was found between habitat types in stem density/ha and basal area m2/ha of chimpanzee food species. Secondary, young secondary, and primary forest emerged as the most important habitat types for availability of food tree species. Our study emphasizes the importance of examining ecological characteristics of an anthropogenic landscape as each available habitat type is unlikely to be equally important in terms of spatial and temporal availability of resources.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1002/ajp.22578
Uncontrolled keywords: Human-dominated landscape; ecological characteristics; resource composition; spatial and temporal food availability; primate conservation
Subjects: Q Science > QH Natural history > QH541 Ecology
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation
Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation > DICE (Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology)
Depositing User: Tatyana Humle
Date Deposited: 03 Feb 2017 15:00 UTC
Last Modified: 17 Aug 2022 12:21 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/57222 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Bryson-Morrison, Nicola.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Humle, Tatyana.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1919-631X
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
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