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Primate foraging strategies modulate responses to anthropogenic change and thus primate conservation
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Edité par CCSD ; University of Chicago Press -
International audience. Many primate populations are threatened as the result of human actions. We are now ethically obligated to take conservation action. To do this, conservation practitioners need to predict negative changes prior to their occurrence. In this chapter, we have used our knowledge of primate nutritional ecology and foraging strategies to make general predictions as to how primates could respond to three global threats : habitat destruction through logging and fragmentation, climate change, and bushmeat hunting. Logging and fragmentation have been extensive over the last few decades and are showing few signs of slowing down, except in areas where there is little or no forest left . In general, folivores typically do better in logged and fragmented areas than frugivores, but this is not always the case, and some frugivores can do well in these disturbed habitats. Climate change is altering the fruiting patterns of trees, creating periods of fruit scarcity, and decreasing the quality ofleaf resources; these changes correspond to declines in insect abundance and lead to some forested areas currently supporting primates being unable to support dosed-canopy forest. The bushmeat trade is a large industry that is decimating many primate populations. Hunters tend to target large-bodied animals, which means the hunted animals are often folivores, as large body size is a requirement of fiber digestion, and these animals are often vulnerable because of their relatively large group size and sedentary lifestyle. They can also unsustainably target large-bodied frugivores. Despite all the research on primate foraging and nutritional ecology published to date, we conclude that we have insufficient knowledge to predict how a particular species in a particular location will respond to disturbance. Thus, there are many ways that new academic studies can contribute to the future conservation of primates.
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