Research and in situ conservation of owl monkeys enhances environmental law enforcement at the Colombian-Peruvian border

Impacts of wildlife trade on terrestrial biodiversity

The wildlife trade is worth billions of dollars annually and affects most major taxonomic groups. Despite this, a global understanding of the trade's impacts on species populations is lacking. We performed a quantitative meta-analysis of the wildlife trade that synthesized 506 species-level effect sizes from 31 studies, estimating trade-driven declines in mammals (452 effect sizes), birds (36) and reptiles (18). Overall, species declined in abundance by 62% (95% confidence interval (CI), 20 to 82%) where trade occurs. Reductions involving national or international trade were greatest, driving declines of 76% (95% CI, 36 to 91%) and 66% (95% CI, 12 to 87%), respectively. The impacts of trade were pervasive, requiring over 102 hours of travel time from settlements for trade to have no mean effect. Current protective measures fail species, with significant declines even where the harvesting for trade occurs in protected areas. Population declines tracked species threat status, indicating heightened extirpation and extinction risk in traded species. Critically, for such a severe global threat to wildlife, our analysis unearthed a limited number of studies using treatment versus control comparisons, and no studies on amphibians, invertebrates, cacti or orchids. Improved management, tackling both unsustainable demand and trade reporting, must be a conservation priority to prevent rampant trade-induced declines.

The evolution of pair-living, sexual monogamy, and cooperative infant care: Insights from research on wild owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins

"Monogamy" and pair bonding have long been of interest to anthropologists and primatologists. Their study contributes to our knowledge of human evolutionary biology and social evolution without the cultural trappings associated with studying human societies directly. Here, we first provide an overview of theoretical considerations, followed by an evaluation of recent comparative studies of the evolution of "social monogamy"; we are left with serious doubts about the conclusions of these studies that stem from the often poor quality of the data used and an overreliance on secondary sources without vetting the data therein. We then describe our field research program on four "monogamous" platyrrhines (owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins), evaluate how well our data support various hypotheses proposed to explain "monogamy," and compare our data to those reported on the same genera in comparative studies. Overall, we found a distressing lack of agreement between the data used in comparative studies and data from the literature for the taxa that we work with. In the final section, we propose areas of research that deserve more attention. We stress the need for more high-quality natural history data, and we urge researchers to be cautious about the uncritical use of variables of uncertain internal validity. Overall, it is imperative that biological anthropologists establish and follow clear criteria for comparing and combining results from published studies and that researchers, reviewers, and editors alike comply with these standards to improve the transparency, reproducibility, and interpretability of causal inferences made in comparative studies.

The effect of habitat disturbance on the abundance of nocturnal lemur species on the Masoala Peninsula, northeastern Madagascar

Madagascar is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. The island's past and current rates of deforestation and habitat disturbance threaten its plethora of endemic biodiversity. On Madagascar, tavy (slash and burn agriculture), land conversion for rice cultivation, illegal hardwood logging and bushmeat hunting are the major contributors to habitat disturbance. Understanding species-specific responses to habitat disturbance across different habitat types is crucial when designing conservation strategies. We surveyed three nocturnal lemur species in four forest types of varying habitat disturbance on the Masoala Peninsula, northeastern Madagascar. We present here updated abundance and density estimates for the Endangered Avahi mooreorum and Lepilemur scottorum, and Microcebus sp. Distance sampling surveys were conducted on 11 transects, covering a total of 33 km after repeated transect walks. We collected data on tree height, bole height, diameter at breast height, canopy cover and tree density using point-quarter sampling to characterise the four forest types (primary lowland, primary littoral, selectively logged and agricultural mosaic). Median encounter rates by forest type ranged from 1 to 1.5 individuals (ind.)/km (Microcebus sp.), 0-1 ind./km (A. mooreorum) and 0-1 ind./km (L. scottorum). Species density estimates were calculated at 232.31 ind./km² (Microcebus sp.) and 121.21 ind./km² (A. mooreorum), while no density estimate is provided for L. scottorum due to a small sample size. Microcebus sp. was most tolerant to habitat disturbance, exhibiting no significant effect of forest type on abundance. Its small body size, omnivorous diet and generalised locomotion appear to allow it to tolerate a variety of habitat disturbance. Both A. mooreorum and L. scottorum showed significant effects of forest type on their respective abundance. This study suggests that the specialist locomotion and diet of A. mooreorum and L. scottorum make them susceptible to the effects of increasing habitat disturbance.

Cambios recientes a la lista de los mamíferos de Colombia

Debido al avance en el desarrollo de investigaciones de diversa índole que involucran mamíferos, cada año se reportan cambios en la riqueza de especies registradas en el territorio nacional. Un esfuerzo notable encaminado a actualizar el conocimiento de este grupo en el país señaló la presencia de 492 especies para el año 2013 (Solari et al. 2013). Este número se incrementó a 500 especies para el año 2014, a partir de revisiones sistemáticas o adiciones de nuevas localidades de distribución para varias especies neotropicales (Ramírez-Chaves & Suárez-Castro 2014) y en esta revisión se aumenta el número de especies a 518 para el país. El incremento ha sido mayor para murciélagos (orden Chiroptera), grupo que actualmente cuenta con el número más alto de especies de mamíferos registradas en Colombia (205 especies). Sin embargo, el uso de nuevas técnicas y exploraciones de campo realizadas por diferentes investigadores han generado una gran cantidad de conocimiento para otros grupos, por lo que es necesario sintetizar la información de manera constante para que estédisponible a todos aquellos involucrados en estudiar y conservar la biodiversidad del país. Con el fin de actualizar el número de especies de mamíferos registradas en el territorio nacional, presentamos una valoración y actualización con los cambios recientes para Colombia durante los últimos meses.