Relationship between human disturbance and habitat use by the endangered françois' langur (trachypithecus francoisi) in mayanghe nature reserve, china

Abstract

François' langur (Trachypithecus francoisi) is an endangered primate that has experienced a decline in population size and associated loss in habitat as a result of human disturbance (IUCN, 2020). We investigated human disturbance and habitat use of François' langur in Mayanghe Nature Reserve, Guizhou, China, by analyzing the effects of various types of human disturbance on habitat use using the spatial simultaneous autoregressive error model (SAR). We found that habitat use intensity of François' langur was positively correlated with slope and distance to roads but was negatively correlated with elevation and distance to bee-keeping locations and grazing locations. The effects of each different human disturbance type were consistently correlated with one another, except for distance to bee-keeping locations and grazing locations. Our results indicate that langurs are restricted to small areas along the rivers in Mayanghe Nature Reserve and area also used by small local roads. The ecological effect of the edge of a road "road-effect zone"was estimated to be 1400m, shorter than the maximum daily travel distance of the François' langur. Therefore, we suggest that an important conservation intervention for supporting the persistence of the species should involve controlling the expansion of road construction to minimize the impacts of human disturbances on the langurs.