Hongjamrassilp Watcharapong, Blumstein Daniel T
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA.
Curr Zool. 2021 Feb 26;68(2):169-176. doi: 10.1093/cz/zoab017. eCollection 2022 Apr.
An increase in ecotourism adversely impacts many animals and contributes to biodiversity loss. To mitigate these impacts, we illustrate the application of a conservation behavior framework toward the development of a sustainable ecotourism management plan. In Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand, thousands of tourists annually come to see a unique mass migration of shrimps on land (referred to as "shrimp parading"). Preliminary work suggests that this tourism has negatively impacted the shrimps. To reduce tourism-related impacts we studied: 1) the decisions shrimps make when parading and 2) how shrimps respond to different light intensities and colors. We created an artificial stream and tested the conditions that influence parading by experimentally varying the presence of light and systematically manipulating water velocity (10, 60, and 100 cm/s). Additionally, we conducted an in situ experiment to study how shrimps respond to tourists' lights under three intensities (50,400, and 9,000 lux) and five colors (white, blue, green, orange, and red). We found most shrimps prefer to leave the river when it is dark and there is low water flow. Shrimps responded the least to red (λmax = 630 nm) and orange (λmax = 625 nm) light at 50 lux. These findings were used to develop a management plan by creating three different tourist zones, which maximize tourist needs and minimize the anthropogenic impacts on the shrimps. This work could be used as an example of the application of conservation behavior framework in developing management plan for sustainable ecotourism for other invertebrate taxa.
生态旅游的增加对许多动物产生了不利影响，并导致生物多样性丧失。为了减轻这些影响，我们阐述了保护行为框架在制定可持续生态旅游管理计划中的应用。在泰国乌汶府，每年有成千上万的游客前来观看独特的虾类陆地大规模迁徙（称为“虾游行”）。初步研究表明，这种旅游业对虾类产生了负面影响。为了减少与旅游相关的影响，我们研究了：1）虾类游行时做出的决策，以及2）虾类对不同光强和颜色的反应。我们创建了一条人工溪流，并通过实验改变光照的存在情况以及系统地控制水流速度（10、60和100厘米/秒）来测试影响游行的条件。此外，我们进行了一项实地实验，以研究虾类在三种光强（50、400和9000勒克斯）和五种颜色（白色、蓝色、绿色、橙色和红色）下对游客灯光的反应。我们发现，大多数虾类在天黑且水流较小时更喜欢离开河流。在50勒克斯的光照下，虾类对红色（λmax = 630纳米）和橙色（λmax = 625纳米）光的反应最小。这些研究结果被用于制定一项管理计划，通过创建三个不同的旅游区，在最大限度满足游客需求的同时，将对虾类的人为影响降至最低。这项工作可作为保护行为框架在为其他无脊椎动物类群制定可持续生态旅游管理计划中的应用范例。
