Abstract
Many nonhuman primates adjust their behavior and thrive in human-altered habitats, including towns and cities. Studying anthropogenic influences from an animal’s perspective can increase our understanding of their behavioral flexibility, presenting important information for human–wildlife cohabitation management plans. Currently, research on anthropogenically disturbed wildlife considers either positive or negative aspects of human–wildlife encounters independently, highlighting a need to consider potential interactions between both aspects. Vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) are a suitable species to address this gap in research as they tolerate urbanization; however, they are understudied in urban landscapes. We conducted this study in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where vervet monkeys are commonly found throughout the anthropogenic landscape. Here we determined, from a monkey’s perspective, how the frequency and nature of human–monkey interactions, both positive (human food availability) and negative (human–monkey aggression), affected vervet monkey ranging patterns in an urban environment. We assessed the movement patterns of three groups of urban vervet monkeys over 1 year, analyzing both 95% and 50% kernel density estimates of their home ranges alongside daily path lengths and path sinuosities every month using generalized linear mixed models. Overall, we found that human interactions within the urban landscape affected all measures of ranging to some degree. The core home ranges of vervet monkeys increased with a higher rate of positive human encounters, and their total home range increased with an interaction of both positive and negative human encounters. Furthermore, vervet monkeys were less likely to respond (i.e., increase daily path length or path sinuosity) to human aggression when food rewards were high, suggesting that effective management should focus on reducing human food foraging opportunities. Our results highlight the complex interplay between positive and negative aspects of urban living and provide guidance for managers of human–nonhuman primate interactions.
Highlights
Anthropogenic pressures are a growing issue for wildlife management, with a global increase in the rate of anthropogenic changes to land use, including urbanization (McKinney 2008)
Negative human encounters were associated with increased daily path length when positive encounters were low, but when monkeys experienced both high negative and high positive events, they were less likely to move on and daily path length did not increase
The interaction between positive and negative human encounters indicated that increasing positive human encounters decreased vervet monkey total home range size; increasing negative human encounters weakened this effect
Summary
Anthropogenic pressures are a growing issue for wildlife management, with a global increase in the rate of anthropogenic changes to land use, including urbanization (McKinney 2008). Almost all wildlife live in an environment that is subject to some level of anthropogenic disturbance (Soulsbury and White 2015). The effects of such environmental change on wildlife vary dramatically with the nature of the disturbance (McKinney 2008), such as habitat loss (Estrada and Coates-Estrada 1996), tourism (Brennan et al 1985; Fuentes et al 2007; McKinney 2014), or modified landscapes (Fuentes and Hockings 2010). There is a bias in the literature to focus on these positive and negative interactions from a human perspective; to understand urban wildlife, possible costs and benefits for wildlife should be considered (Soulsbury and White 2015)
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