2/28/2023 0 Comments Nigeria cameroon chimpanzeeNest abundance varied with vegetation type and was higher in areas with dense canopy cover, steeper slopes and relatively higher altitudes. Chimpanzee density was 0.88 individuals/km² in the dense forest and 0.59 in the forest-savannah mosaic. Of these, 119 nests along 68 km occurred in dense forest and 130 nests along 64 km in forest-savannah mosaic. RESULTS: We counted 249 nests along 132 km of transects in total. The habitat variation in chimpanzees is poorly understood in MDNP which provides an excellent opportunity to assess ecological factors that shape the abundance and distribution patterns of P. The chimpanzee Pan troglodytes ellioti is endemic to Nigeria and Cameroon, and occupies an ecologically diverse range of habitats from forests to forest-savannah mosaic in Mbam-Djerem National Park (MDNP) in Cameroon. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.BACKGROUND: Understanding the relationship between great apes and their habitat is essential for the development of successful conservation strategies. The discovery of this population of “naïve chimpanzees” presents us with an important research and conservation opportunity that may result in the installation of a long-term research site and increased protection of the population. The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is that with increasing distance from roads, chimpanzees have in the recent past had fewer negative encounters with humans, and thus never learned to fear them. In addition, arboreal contact durations with Gangu chimpanzees lasted significantly longer than elsewhere. We found that chimpanzees in the remote Gangu Forest were more likely to show curious or neutral reactions to us and were less likely to flee than those living closer to roads. In order to assess the impact of human activities on chimpanzee behavior, we compared reactions to humans of Eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) living in proximity to and at a distance from roads and settlements in the Bili-Uele landscape in Northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). These data support Baldwin and colleagues’ (Primates 22:474–486, 1981) hypothesis that the principal advantage of SPs over open-branch sleeping sites is the greater stability required by large-bodied great apes. Given the observation that males site SPs lower than females (Fruth and Hohmann, Ethology 94:113–126, 1994 Brownlow et al., Am J Primatol 55:49–55, 2001), and that SP diameters were greater for SPs sited low in the canopy at Semliki, it is inferred that more massive males benefit from lower climbing expenses and greater stability. Greater complexity (and therefore stability) is argued to maintain SP integrity, stability and restraint in the face of greater wind speeds, thereby reducing the probability of falls. SP complexity was found to be correlated with SP circumference, surface area, mass, proportion of soft leafy material to hard woody material, number of frame support branches used in its construction, and other measures that are argued to index ‘‘comfort.’’ In addition, the height of the tree canopy above the SP was negatively correlated with SP complexity. SP complexity was defined with a scored index. I measured SP length (semi-major axis length), width (semiminor axis length), radii (length from the surface center to the rim edge 45 from the axis), depth (width of the concavity from the surface center to the parallel rim), and thickness (ventral center to the dorsal underside of the SP). I gathered quantitative structural data on SPs (n = 65) at the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve from May to June 2008 and from August 2010 to January 2011. This is in part due to the inherent difficulties of gathering empirical data on arboreally sited SPs. The nightly construction of a sleeping platform (SP) or ‘‘nest’’ is widely regarded as a universal behavior among great apes, yet SP structural morphology has been incompletely quantified to date.
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