Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve: Long-Term Research on Lemurs in Southwestern Madagascar

Abstract

The Beza Mahafaly Project in southwestern Madagascar was founded in 1975. It was established as a collaborative effort among the University of Madagascar (now University of Antananarivo), Washington University, Yale University, and the local communities for long-term training and research, biodiversity conservation, and socioeconomic development. Beza Mahafaly consists of two noncontiguous forest parcels separated by 10 km that became a protected area (Reserve Speciale) in 1986: an 80-ha gallery forest and a 520-ha xerophytic spiny forest. The region has a diversity of habitats and a very diverse and highly endemic flora and fauna, including four species of lemurs found in or near the reserve. The ringtailed lemur (Lemur catta) and Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) have been the subject of our long-term research. In this chapter we highlight some of the results of this research. Our multidisciplinary studies illustrate the feasibility of collecting long-term data on careers of individual animals and of obtaining large samples on numerous animals, across numerous social groups, in relatively isolated breeding populations. Thus, we can provide insights into many of the demographic, socioecological, anthropogenic, and epidemiological factors that shape the local ringtailed lemur and sifaka population. Here we summarize how ringtailed lemur demographic structure is affected by climatic perturbations (drought); how aspects of general health (parasite loads and dental health) are directly related to habitat, dietary, and anthropogenic factors; how tight birth seasonality in sifaka can elicit stress responses in males associated with increased male aggression, group takeovers, and infanticide risk; how life history schedules are related to evolutionary responses to extreme climatic fluctuations; and how directional selection among sifaka males leads to longer, stronger legs, but not to increase in male body mass relative to females.