Does habitat disturbance affect stress, body condition and parasitism in two sympatric lemurs?

Abstract

Un­der­stand­ing how an­i­mals react to human-in­duced changes in their en­vi­ron­ment is a key ques­tion in con­ser­va­tion bi­ol­ogy. Owing to their po­ten­tial cor­re­la­tion with fit­ness, sev­eral phys­i­o­log­i­cal pa­ra­me­ters are com­monly used to as­sess the ef­fect of habi­tat dis­tur­bance on an­i­mals’ gen­eral health sta­tus. Here, we stud­ied how two lemur species, the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius) and the grey mouse lemur (Mi­cro­ce­bus mur­i­nus), re­spond to chang­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions by com­par­ing their stress lev­els (mea­sured as hair cor­ti­sol con­cen­tra­tion), par­a­sitism and gen­eral body con­di­tion across four habi­tats or­dered along a gra­di­ent of human dis­tur­bance at Kirindy For­est, West­ern Mada­gas­car. These two species pre­vi­ously re­vealed con­trast­ing re­sponses to human dis­tur­bance; whereas M. mur­i­nus is known as a re­silient species, C. medius is rarely en­coun­tered in highly dis­turbed habi­tats. How­ever, nei­ther hair cor­ti­sol con­cen­tra­tions nor par­a­sitism pat­terns (preva­lence, par­a­site species rich­ness and rate of mul­ti­ple in­fec­tions) and body con­di­tion var­ied across the gra­di­ent of an­thro­pogenic dis­tur­bance. Our re­sults in­di­cate that the ef­fect of an­thro­pogenic ac­tiv­i­ties at Kirindy For­est is not re­flected in the gen­eral health sta­tus of both species, which may have de­vel­oped a range of be­hav­ioural adap­ta­tions to deal with sub­op­ti­mal con­di­tions. Nonethe­less, a dif­fer­ence in rel­a­tive den­sity among sites sug­gests that the car­ry­ing ca­pac­ity of dis­turbed habi­tat is lower, and both species re­spond dif­fer­ently to en­vi­ron­men­tal changes, with C. medius being more neg­a­tively af­fected. Thus, even for be­hav­iourally flex­i­ble species, ex­tended habi­tat de­te­ri­o­ra­tion could ham­per long-term vi­a­bil­ity of pop­u­la­tions.

Publication
Conservation Physiology, Volume 4, Issue 1
Date
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