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Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

BACKGROUND: Assessing wildlife movements and habitat use is important for species conservation and management and can be informative for understanding population dynamics. The African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) population of Ruaha National Park, Tanzania has been declining, and little was known about...

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Autores principales: Roug, Annette, Muse, Epaphras A., Clifford, Deana L., Larsen, Randy, Paul, Goodluck, Mathayo, Daniel, Mpanduji, Donald, Mazet, Jonna A. K., Kazwala, Rudovick, Kiwango, Halima, Smith, Woutrina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6998266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32013942
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-020-0274-4
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author Roug, Annette
Muse, Epaphras A.
Clifford, Deana L.
Larsen, Randy
Paul, Goodluck
Mathayo, Daniel
Mpanduji, Donald
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
Kazwala, Rudovick
Kiwango, Halima
Smith, Woutrina
author_facet Roug, Annette
Muse, Epaphras A.
Clifford, Deana L.
Larsen, Randy
Paul, Goodluck
Mathayo, Daniel
Mpanduji, Donald
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
Kazwala, Rudovick
Kiwango, Halima
Smith, Woutrina
author_sort Roug, Annette
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Assessing wildlife movements and habitat use is important for species conservation and management and can be informative for understanding population dynamics. The African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) population of Ruaha National Park, Tanzania has been declining, and little was known about the movement, habitat selection, and space use of the population, which is important for understanding possible reasons behind the decline. A total of 12 African buffalo cows from four different herds were collared with satellite transmitters. Movements were assessed over 2 years from 11 animals. RESULTS: The space use of the individual collared buffaloes as an approximation of the 95% home range size estimated using Brownian bridge models, ranged from 73 to 601 km(2). The estimated home ranges were larger in the wet season than in the dry season. With the exception of one buffalo all collared animals completed a wet season migration of varying distances. A consistent pattern of seasonal movement was observed with one herd, whereas the other herds did not behave the same way in the two wet seasons that they were tracked. Herd splitting and herd switching occurred on multiple occasions. Buffaloes strongly associated with habitats near the Great Ruaha River in the dry season and had little association to permanent water sources in the wet season. Daily movements averaged 4.6 km (standard deviation, SD = 2.6 km), with the longest distances traveled during November (mean 6.9 km, SD = 3.6 km) at the end of the dry season and beginning of the wet season. The shortest daily distances traveled occurred in the wet season in April–June (mean 3.6 km, SD = 1.6–1.8 km). CONCLUSION: The Great Ruaha River has experienced significant drying in the last decades due to water diversions upstream, which likely has reduced the suitable range for buffaloes. The loss of dry season habitat due to water scarcity has likely contributed to the population decline of the Ruaha buffaloes.
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spelling pubmed-69982662020-02-05 Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania Roug, Annette Muse, Epaphras A. Clifford, Deana L. Larsen, Randy Paul, Goodluck Mathayo, Daniel Mpanduji, Donald Mazet, Jonna A. K. Kazwala, Rudovick Kiwango, Halima Smith, Woutrina BMC Ecol Research Article BACKGROUND: Assessing wildlife movements and habitat use is important for species conservation and management and can be informative for understanding population dynamics. The African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) population of Ruaha National Park, Tanzania has been declining, and little was known about the movement, habitat selection, and space use of the population, which is important for understanding possible reasons behind the decline. A total of 12 African buffalo cows from four different herds were collared with satellite transmitters. Movements were assessed over 2 years from 11 animals. RESULTS: The space use of the individual collared buffaloes as an approximation of the 95% home range size estimated using Brownian bridge models, ranged from 73 to 601 km(2). The estimated home ranges were larger in the wet season than in the dry season. With the exception of one buffalo all collared animals completed a wet season migration of varying distances. A consistent pattern of seasonal movement was observed with one herd, whereas the other herds did not behave the same way in the two wet seasons that they were tracked. Herd splitting and herd switching occurred on multiple occasions. Buffaloes strongly associated with habitats near the Great Ruaha River in the dry season and had little association to permanent water sources in the wet season. Daily movements averaged 4.6 km (standard deviation, SD = 2.6 km), with the longest distances traveled during November (mean 6.9 km, SD = 3.6 km) at the end of the dry season and beginning of the wet season. The shortest daily distances traveled occurred in the wet season in April–June (mean 3.6 km, SD = 1.6–1.8 km). CONCLUSION: The Great Ruaha River has experienced significant drying in the last decades due to water diversions upstream, which likely has reduced the suitable range for buffaloes. The loss of dry season habitat due to water scarcity has likely contributed to the population decline of the Ruaha buffaloes. BioMed Central 2020-02-03 /pmc/articles/PMC6998266/ /pubmed/32013942 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-020-0274-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Roug, Annette
Muse, Epaphras A.
Clifford, Deana L.
Larsen, Randy
Paul, Goodluck
Mathayo, Daniel
Mpanduji, Donald
Mazet, Jonna A. K.
Kazwala, Rudovick
Kiwango, Halima
Smith, Woutrina
Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title_full Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title_fullStr Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title_full_unstemmed Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title_short Seasonal movements and habitat use of African buffalo in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania
title_sort seasonal movements and habitat use of african buffalo in ruaha national park, tanzania
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6998266/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32013942
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12898-020-0274-4
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