Chimpanzees balance resources and risk in an anthropogenic landscape of fear

Elena Bersacola,Kimberley J Hockings,Catherine M Hill

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-83852-3

Elena Bersacola, Kimberley J Hockings + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83852-3

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Abstract

Human-wildlife coexistence is possible when animals can meet their ecological requirements while managing human-induced risks. Understanding how wildlife balance these trade-offs in anthropogenic environments is crucial to develop effective strategies to reduce risks of negative interactions, including bi-directional aggression and disease transmission. For the first time, we use a landscape of fear framework with Bayesian spatiotemporal modelling to investigate anthropogenic risk-mitigation and optimal foraging trade-offs in Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Using 12 months of camera trap data (21 camera traps, 6722 camera trap days) and phenology on wild and cultivated plant species collected at Caiquene–Cadique, Cantanhez National Park (Guinea-Bissau), we show that humans and chimpanzees broadly overlapped in their use of forest and anthropogenic parts of the habitat including villages and cultivated areas. The spatiotemporal model showed that chimpanzee use of space was predicted by the availability of naturalised oil-palm fruit. Chimpanzees used areas away from villages and agriculture more intensively, but optimised their foraging strategies by increasing their use of village areas with cultivated fruits when wild fruits were scarce. Our modelling approach generates fine-resolution space–time output maps, which can be scaled-up to identify human-wildlife interaction hotspots at the landscape level, informing coexistence strategy.

Highlights

Human-wildlife coexistence is possible when animals can meet their ecological requirements while managing human-induced risks
Hunting is a direct driver of biodiversity loss, of large mammals, and has indirect impacts on ecosystem functioning by fuelling trophic c ascades[1]
We identified an upper limit of co-occurrence; there were no sampling sites where both chimpanzee and humans had > 45 relative detection frequencies (RDF) values

Summary

Introduction

Human-wildlife coexistence is possible when animals can meet their ecological requirements while managing human-induced risks. Understanding how wildlife balance these trade-offs in anthropogenic environments is crucial to develop effective strategies to reduce risks of negative interactions, including bi-directional aggression and disease transmission. We use a landscape of fear framework with Bayesian spatiotemporal modelling to investigate anthropogenic risk-mitigation and optimal foraging trade-offs in Critically Endangered western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus). Understanding the strategies that wildlife use to balance costs and opportunities in shared landscapes, and how dynamics change over time, can facilitate long-term human-wildlife coexistence capacity. The landscape of fear is an established concept in predator–prey interaction s tudies[19,20,21] It posits that animals learn about spatiotemporal variations in risk through predation escapes, and the learnt fear shapes their decisions over where and when to feed, travel and r est[22]. Considering over 60% of primates are threatened with extinction mainly due to agricultural expansion[35], and that primate ecological adaptations often impact people’s livelihoods, a flexible framework for capturing dynamic human-primate interactions is needed

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