Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, 105 Guyot Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08540, U.S.A.
Division of Vertebrate Zoology, Department of Mammalogy, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY, 10024, U.S.A.
Conserv Biol. 2019 Feb;33(1):99-111. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13151. Epub 2018 Sep 10.
Subsistence hunting presents a conservation challenge by which biodiversity preservation must be balanced with safeguarding of human livelihoods. Globally, subsistence hunting threatens primate populations, including Madagascar's endemic lemurs. We used population viability analysis to assess the sustainability of lemur hunting in Makira Natural Park, Madagascar. We identified trends in seasonal hunting of 11 Makira lemur species from household interview data, estimated local lemur densities in populations adjacent to focal villages via transect surveys, and quantified extinction vulnerability for these populations based on species-specific demographic parameters and empirically derived hunting rates. We compared stage-based Lefkovitch with periodic Leslie matrices to evaluate the impact of regional dispersal on persistence trajectories and explored the consequences of perturbations to the timing of peak hunting relative to the lemur birth pulse, under assumptions of density-dependent reproductive compensation. Lemur hunting peaked during the fruit-abundant wet season (March-June). Estimated local lemur densities were roughly inverse to body size across our study area. Life-history modeling indicated that hunting most severely threatened the species with the largest bodies (i.e., Hapalemur occidentalis, Avahi laniger, Daubentonia madagascariensis, and Indri indi), characterized by late-age reproductive onsets and long interbirth intervals. In model simulations, lemur dispersal within a regional metapopulation buffered extinction threats when a majority of local sites supported growth rates above the replacement level but drove regional extirpations when most local sites were overharvested. Hunt simulations were most detrimental when timed to overlap lemur births (a reality for D. madagascariensis and I. indri). In sum, Makira lemurs were overharvested. Regional extirpations, which may contribute to broad-scale extinctions, will be likely if current hunting rates persist. Cessation of anthropogenic lemur harvest is a conservation priority, and development programs are needed to help communities switch from wildlife consumption to domestic protein alternatives.
生计狩猎对生物多样性的保护构成了挑战，必须在保障人类生计的同时保护生物多样性。在全球范围内，生计狩猎威胁着灵长类动物的生存，包括马达加斯加特有的狐猴。我们使用种群生存力分析来评估马达加斯加马基拉自然公园的狐猴狩猎的可持续性。我们从家庭访谈数据中确定了 11 种马基拉狐猴物种季节性狩猎的趋势，通过对焦点村庄附近的种群进行样带调查来估计当地狐猴的密度，并根据物种特定的人口参数和经验得出的狩猎率来量化这些种群的灭绝脆弱性。我们比较了基于阶段的 Lefkovitch 和周期性 Leslie 矩阵，以评估区域扩散对持续轨迹的影响，并在假设密度依赖的生殖补偿下，探索了相对于狐猴出生脉冲峰值狩猎时间的扰动对种群灭绝的影响。狐猴狩猎在果实丰富的雨季（三月至六月）达到高峰。在我们的研究区域内，估计的当地狐猴密度与体型大致呈反比。基于生命史的建模表明，狩猎对体型最大的物种（即西部低地狐猴、长尾狐猴、马岛獴和印度环尾狐猴）威胁最大，这些物种的繁殖高峰期较晚，出生间隔较长。在模型模拟中，当大多数当地站点的增长率高于替代水平时，区域物种扩散在一定程度上缓冲了灭绝威胁，但当大多数当地站点被过度捕猎时，它会导致区域灭绝。当狩猎时间与狐猴出生时间重叠时（对于马岛獴和印度环尾狐猴来说是现实的），狩猎模拟的危害最大。总的来说，马基拉狐猴被过度捕猎了。如果目前的狩猎率持续下去，区域灭绝可能会导致大规模灭绝。停止人为的狐猴捕猎是当务之急，需要发展计划来帮助社区从野生动物消费转向国内蛋白质替代品。
