Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 10, 2025
11:06
Laparoscopic Technique for Serial Collection of Liver and Mesenteric Lymph Nodes in Macaques
Published on: May 2, 2017
51.3K
Space Use by Crop-Foraging Barbary Macaques When Crops Are Not Available
Elsa Minot1, Alexandre Corbeau1, Clara Tanvier1
1CNRS, ECOBIO [(Ecosystèmes, biodiversité, évolution)] - UMR 6553 University of Rennes Rennes France.
Ecology and Evolution
|August 27, 2025
Summary
This study tracked Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) near Moroccan orchards. Results show macaques utilized orchard vicinity resources year-round, not just during fruit availability, indicating sustained resource availability.
Area of Science:
- Primatology
- Ecology
- Conservation Biology
Background:
- Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) face resource scarcity during non-fruiting seasons.
- Understanding habitat use is crucial for primate conservation, especially in human-modified landscapes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the spatial ecology of Barbary macaques in relation to seasonal crop availability.
- To assess the influence of resource availability on macaque space use and home range overlap.
Main Methods:
- Tracking space use of two male Barbary macaques near cultivated orchards (cherry, walnut) and an oak forest.
- Observing macaque visitation patterns during different seasons and resource availability.
Main Results:
- Macaques remained near orchards even when fruit was unavailable, utilizing other resources.
- Orchard visitation peaked during walnut availability and herbaceous growth, aligning with the resource dispersion hypothesis.
- Orchard visitation was lowest when cherries were available, suggesting varied resource utilization.
Conclusions:
- Orchards and their surroundings provide essential resources for Barbary macaques outside of peak fruit seasons.
- Habitat management integrating cultivated areas can support primate populations year-round.
- Effective crop protection measures were confirmed by macaque behavior patterns.
Related Concept Videos
02:31Habitat Fragmentation
17.9K
Habitat fragmentation describes the division of a more extensive, continuous habitat into smaller, discontinuous areas. Human activities such as land conversion, as well as slower geological processes leading to changes in the physical environment, are the two leading causes of habitat fragmentation. The fragmentation process typically follows the same steps: perforation, dissection, fragmentation, shrinkage, and attrition.
17.9K
02:02Ecological Niches
24.5K
All organisms have a position within an ecosystem. The complete set of living and nonliving factors—including food resources, climate, and terrain—that define the position of a given organism are collectively referred to as the organism’s ecological niche.
24.5K
00:53Migration
8.1K
Migration is long-range, seasonal movement from one region or habitat to another. This common strategy, carried out by many different organisms around the world, is an adaptive response that typically corresponds to changes in an organism’s environment, like resource availability or climate. Migrations can involve huge groups of thousands of animals as well as single individuals traveling alone and can range from thousands of kilometers to just a few hundred meters.
8.1K
00:51Energy Budgets
9.7K
Organisms must balance energy intake with the energy required for growth, maintenance and reproduction. These trade-offs result in a variety of survivorship and reproductive strategies, including semelparity and iteroparity. Semelparous species, like annual plants, have only one reproductive episode in their lifetimes and consequently have short lifespans. Iteroparous species, by contrast, have many reproductive events during their lifetimes but have relatively few offspring. These two...
9.7K
02:04Conservation of Small Populations
13.5K
Small population sizes put a species at extreme risk of extinction due to a lack of variation, and a consequent decrease in adaptability. This weakens the chances of survival under pressures such as climate change, competition from other species, or new diseases. Large populations are more likely to survive pressures such as these, as such populations are more likely to harbor individuals that have genetic variants that are adaptive under new stresses. Small populations are much less...
13.5K
02:07Conservation of Declining Populations
9.7K
Conservation of declining population focuses on ways of detecting, diagnosing, and halting a population decline. The approach uses methods to prevent populations from going extinct.
9.7K