Space Use by Crop-Foraging Barbary Macaques When Crops Are Not Available

We documented the influence of the section of the annual life cycle when crops were not available by tracking space use by two male Barbary macaques Macaca sylvanus that had access to the same cultivated area with cherry and walnut trees, adjacent to an oak forest near Ifrane NP, Morocco. Both individuals remained within a few kilometers of the orchards, even when there was no fruit available. They visited the orchards the most at the beginning of the study when walnuts were available and the herbaceous layer grew, leading to a peak in home range overlap, as predicted by the resource dispersion hypothesis. By contrast, they visited the orchards the least when cherries were available at the end of the study. These results indicated that the orchards and their vicinity hold resources that sustained the macaques outside of the cherry and walnut seasons, and confirmed that the wardens who were hired for this purpose efficiently protected the cherry crop.