A Decadal Home-Range Dynamics and Habitat Shift in Golden Snub-Nosed Monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana)

Understanding how animals adjust their space use in changing environments is important for conservation, especially for species restricted to fragmented mountain habitats. We studied the home range of one wild group of golden snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana) in Baihe National Nature Reserve, Sichuan Province, China, using 10 years of monitoring data from 2014 to 2023. We estimated seasonal and annual home ranges, examined elevational use, reconstructed annual habitat suitability, and assessed which environmental variables were most closely associated with home-range size. The results revealed seasonal variation in home range, with the smallest ranges occurring during winter, and showed that space use was concentrated at mid-elevations, approximately 2300-2700 m. MaxEnt-predicted suitable-habitat area increased slightly over the decade, but this change mainly reflected core stability with peripheral reorganization. Predictor importance analyses suggested a temporal shift in the main determinants of habitat suitability, from topography and human disturbance toward hydrology. Machine-learning results indicated that home-range size was mainly associated with coniferous forest area, MaxEnt-derived suitable-habitat area, shaded-slope area, and other environmental predictors. Our results suggest that R. roxellana employs dynamic spatial-use strategies to adapt to the complexity of mountainous environments. These findings highlight that conservation efforts should shift from a focus on "area-based protection" to "function-based conservation," with priority given to maintaining stable high-suitability core areas, key coniferous forest patches, and topographic heterogeneity.