Beardmore-Herd Megan, Palmer Meredith S, Gaynor Kaitlyn M, Carvalho Susana
Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB), Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal.
Am J Biol Anthropol. 2025 Jan;186(1):e25049. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.25049.
With contemporary, human-induced climate change at a crisis point, extreme weather events (e.g., cyclones, heatwaves, floods) are becoming more frequent, intense, and difficult to predict. These events can wreak rapid and significant changes on ecosystems; thus, it is imperative to understand how wildlife communities respond to these disruptions. Primates are perceived as being a largely adaptable order, but we often lack the quantitative data to rigorously assess how they are impacted by extreme environmental change. Leveraging detections from a long-term camera trap survey, this opportunistic study reports the effects of an extreme weather event on a little-studied population of free-ranging primates in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique.
We examined shifts in gray-footed chacma baboon (Papio ursinus griseipes) and vervet monkey (Chlorocebus pygerythrus) spatial distribution and relative abundance following Cyclone Idai-a category four tropical cyclone that struck Mozambique in March 2019.
Baboon spatial distributions were impacted in the first month after the cyclone, with more detections in areas where flooding was less severe. Spatial distributions renormalized once floodwaters began to recede. We describe vervet monkey spatial distribution trends, though sample size limitations inhibited statistical analysis. Primate relative abundance did not appear to substantially decrease following the cyclone, suggesting troops were able to adopt behavioral adjustments to evade rising floodwaters.
These findings highlight the behavioral flexibility of Gorongosa's primates and their ability to adapt to extreme-if temporary-disruptions, with implications for primate conservation in the Anthropocene and research into how rapid climatic events may have shaped primate evolution.
在当代人为引起的气候变化处于危机点之际，极端天气事件（如气旋、热浪、洪水）正变得更加频繁、强烈且难以预测。这些事件会给生态系统带来迅速而重大的变化；因此，了解野生动物群落如何应对这些干扰至关重要。灵长类动物被认为是一个适应性很强的目，但我们往往缺乏定量数据来严格评估它们如何受到极端环境变化的影响。利用一项长期相机陷阱调查的监测数据，这项机会性研究报告了一次极端天气事件对莫桑比克戈龙戈萨国家公园一个鲜为人研究的自由放养灵长类动物种群的影响。
我们研究了2019年3月袭击莫桑比克的四级热带气旋伊代过后，灰脚 chacma 狒狒（Papio ursinus griseipes）和绿猴（Chlorocebus pygerythrus）空间分布和相对丰度的变化。
气旋过后的第一个月，狒狒的空间分布受到影响，在洪水不太严重的地区检测到的数量更多。一旦洪水开始消退，空间分布就恢复正常。我们描述了绿猴的空间分布趋势，不过样本量的限制阻碍了统计分析。气旋过后，灵长类动物的相对丰度似乎没有大幅下降，这表明猴群能够采取行为调整来躲避不断上涨的洪水。
这些发现凸显了戈龙戈萨灵长类动物的行为灵活性以及它们适应极端（即使是暂时的）干扰的能力，这对人类世的灵长类动物保护以及快速气候事件如何塑造灵长类动物进化的研究具有启示意义。
