African elephant (Loxodonta africana) select less fragmented landscapes to connect core habitats in human-dominated landscapes

被引:8
作者
Gara, Tawanda W. [1 ,2 ]
Wang, Tiejun [3 ]
Dube, Timothy [4 ]
Ngene, Shadrack M. [5 ]
Mpakairi, Kudzai S. [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Zimbabwe, Dept Geog Geospatial Sci & Earth Observat, POB MP167, Harare, Zimbabwe
[2] Univ Maine, Sch Forest Resources, Coll Nat Sci Forestry & Agr, Orono, ME USA
[3] Univ Twente, Fac Geoinformat Sci & Earth Observat ITC, Enschede, Netherlands
[4] Univ Western Cape, Dept Earth Sci, Bellville, South Africa
[5] Kenya Wildlife Serv, Nairobi, Kenya
关键词
African elephant; Brownian Bridge Movement Model; corridors; grazing resources; habitat fragmentation; AMBOSELI NATIONAL-PARK; PRODUCTIVITY; MOVEMENTS; ECOSYSTEM; RANGE;
D O I
10.1111/aje.12839
中图分类号
Q14 [生态学(生物生态学)];
学科分类号
071012 ; 0713 ;
摘要
African elephants (Loxodonta africana) utilise corridors to access limited resources, that is forage and water scattered across heterogeneous habitats they roam. The existence of small elephant metapopulations depend on the intactness of these corridors to access the scarce resources. Due to the sedentarisation of the previously nomadic Maasai people, elephant corridors have been exposed to increased fragmentation from human-induced activities across the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya. In this study, we sought to compare the scale of fragmentation between corridors and their immediate landscapes (noncorridors) in the Amboseli ecosystem, Kenya. We used a Brownian Bridge Movement Model (BBMM) to identify corridors used by elephants from global positioning system (GPS) collar data. The scale of fragmentation between corridors and noncorridors was determined using the effective mesh size fragmentation metric (m(eff)). Our results showed that elephant corridors were significantly less fragmented (Wilcoxon sum rank test: W = 6,121.5, p < 0.05) when compared to the noncorridors. The presence of fragmentation geometries in the corridors remains a major cause of concern for wildlife managers as they have the potential to invade and constrict the existing corridors. Our results underscore the need to extend management of elephant habitats to migration corridors outside protected areas.
引用
收藏
页码:370 / 377
页数:8
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