Multilevel and transdisciplinary approaches to understanding endangered primates in complex landscapes: Golden-headed lion tamarins in southern bahia, Brazil

Abstract

The effect of forest fragmentation on arboreal species can be measured and quantified at various scales using a variety of technical approaches. Multidisciplinary studies or networks of studies that integrate information across scales and fields of expertise provide the most comprehensive understanding of fragmentation. We illustrate the use of a multifaceted approach to assess the threats, and conservation status, of golden-headed lion tamarins (Leontopithecus chrysomelas, GHLTs), an endangered primate residing in a highly complex landscape of Southern Bahia, Brazil. Most remaining habitat is in the hands of private landowners. In the west, the cattle industry has contributed to the severe fragmentation of forests and led to small and extremely isolated fragments. Local GHLT extinctions are occurring quickly. In the east, declining market prices of cocoa and the rapid spread of a fungal disease have devastated cocoa production, and once rather contiguous expanses of shade-cocoa forests are rapidly being converted to unsuitable habitat. GHLTs have been studied at the population level, with increasingly more information being generated on their behavior, ecology, demographics, habitat, genetics, and health. GHLTs (and their landscapes) have also been studied at broader levels, yielding vital information regarding habitat change and fragmentation trends over time, predictors of the presence and absence, and viability and threat analysis via simulation modeling. Collectively, this information is giving rise to a more integrated sense of the mechanisms by which anthropogenic pressures are affecting GHLTs. Additional factors regarding the rich history of GHLT conservation efforts are discussed in this chapter. In an environment as spatially and temporally dynamic as Southern Bahia, a conservation management approach involving evaluation, adaptation, synthesis, and prioritization is critical towards developing efficient conservation action plans sensitive to the continuously changing socioeconomic context.