Park Rangers' Behaviors and Their Effects on Tourists and Tibetan Macaques (Macaca thibetana) at Mt. Huangshan, China

Coordination and consensus: the role of compromisers in Tibetan macaques

Coordination and consensus in collective behavior have attracted a lot of research interest. Although previous studies have investigated the role of compromisers in group consensus, they provide little insight into why compromisers would allow such social arrangements to persist. In this study, the potential relationship between group movements and conflict management in Tibetan macaques in Anhui province, China, was investigated using hierarchical cluster analyses. Some members with higher social centrality or social rank often formed a front-runner cluster during group movements. They had higher leadership success than individuals outside the front-runner cluster. Other members with lower social centrality or social rank often followed the group movements initiated by the front-runner cluster, and thus formed the compromiser cluster. Compromisers’ proximity relations with front-runners increased with their following scores to front-runners. Compromisers had fewer events of being attacked when they followed group movements initiated by the front-runners. The compromising process made compromisers lose the choice of direction preference, but it could increase their individual safeties. This trade-off suggests that compromisers play a role of decision-maker in coordination and consensus scenarios among social animals.

Sexual Interference Behaviors in Male Adult and Subadult Tibetan Macaques (Macaca thibetana)

Simple Summary

Sexual interference behaviors (interruption/harassment) by male nonhuman primates can lead copulating individuals to separate and is hypothetically a form of male–male competition for access to sexually receptive females. Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) provide an example of male sexual interference that can be used to discuss the sexual competition hypothesis. We found male sexual interference in this species showed significant seasonal variation. Age did not affect the proportion or type of interference behaviors that a male performed, but his social status did. Dominant males more often interrupted copulations. Subordinate males more often directed harassment behaviors toward dominant males, which reduced copulation duration, especially the post-ejaculatory phase of copulation. Our results suggest that sexual interference (interruption or harassment) may be a tactic to reduce the mating success of other males by either preventing ejaculation or reducing the duration of the post-ejaculatory phase, which is critical for sperm transport and, thus, reproductive success.

Abstract

Male nonhuman primate sexual interference, which includes copulation interruption and copulation harassment, has been related to reproductive success, but its significance has been challenging to test. Copulation interruption results in the termination of a copulation before ejaculation, whereas copulation harassment does not. We conducted this study using the all-occurrence behavior sampling method on sexual interference behaviors of seven adult and four subadult male Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) in mating and non-mating seasons at Mt. Huangshan, China, from August 2016 to May 2017. Our results showed that males’ individual proportion of copulation interruption and harassment was higher during the mating season than during the non-mating season. In addition, dominant males more often performed interruption, whereas subordinate males more often performed harassment. We found no difference in the individual proportion of copulation interruption or harassment between adult and subadult males. Adult and subadult males both directed copulation interruption and harassment more often toward the mating male than toward the mating female. Lastly, the post-ejaculation phase of copulation was shorter when copulation harassment occurred than when it did not. Our results suggest that sexual interference may be an important mating tactic that adult and subadult males use in male–male sexual competition.

Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mammals at tourism destinations: a systematic review

The COVID‐19 outbreak is having an unprecedented effect on human society, but how is it affecting the mammals that people live with? Mammals that were part of tourism experiences are of concern, because they impact on people’s health and livelihoods and, since many of them are now dependent on people, we urge consideration of the status of these mammals as a result of the pandemic.

We provide a systematic review of the impacts the COVID‐19 outbreak has had on mammals in tourism venues. We examine reports of diverse species in various settings responding to changes in their environments that are occurring because of the pandemic.

We searched the scholarly literature, preprints, and online news sources using combinations of the search terms ‘tourism’, ‘animals’, ‘wildlife’, ‘coronavirus’, and ‘COVID‐19’. We searched Web of Science, SCOPUS, EBSCOHost, JSTOR, bioRxiv, OSFPREPRINTS, GDELT, Google News, and National Public Radio, and analysed a total of 39 news articles, one peer‐reviewed article, and six preprints.

In total, we identified 92 distinct animal reports representing 48 mammal species. We used an existing tourism classification schema to categorise each article based on the situation reported, with the new addition of one context. We classified 92 separate animal reports in 46 articles into four (of six possible) contexts: mammals as attractions (n = 40 animal reports), mammals as commodities (n = 33), mammals as threats (n = 2), and unusual sightings of mammals (n = 17). Shortage of food, in danger of losing home, having an enriched/relaxed environment, spatial expansion, disease transmission, and poaching are the major impacts or events reported in these contexts.

We suggest changes for each context with respect to how people interface with mammals, with the goal of improving the lives of mammals and the people dependent on them.

The elephant at the fence: almsman, panhandler, friend or foe?

Feeding of wild Asian elephants at the Udawalawe National Park perimeter electric fence by the general public is longstanding. We monitored the elephants and feeding activities, and conducted questionnaire surveys of stakeholders. Over 50 individual adult male elephants engaged in the activity. The exclusive male presence was consistent with a high-risk high-gain male strategy. The elephants were mostly offered fruits and vegetables. Over a thousand people a day watched and fed the elephants. Most people bought food for elephants from roadside stalls and vendors had significantly more sales if elephants were present. The feeding of elephants brought significant economic benefit to communities bordering the park. We found the impacts of feeding on the elephants and environment to be largely neutral. Impacts on people and conservation were mainly positive. Actions taken by authorities to stop the feeding have targeted the elephants and resulted in the decrease of feeding but not its elimination. Managing the activity instead would help increase economic benefits and ensure safe interaction between people and elephants. Such management, by directly benefitting local communities, could make them partners in the conservation process and form the basis of an effective outreach program.

Assessing the Effects of Tourist Provisioning on the Health of Wild Barbary Macaques in Morocco

Feeding wildlife is a very popular tourist activity, largely because it facilitates the close observation of animals in their natural habitat. Such provisioning may benefit animals by improving their survival and reproductive success, especially during periods of natural food shortage. However, provisioning by tourists may also have negative impacts on the health of the animals involved; to date such impacts are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the effects of tourist provisioning on the health of wild adult Barbary macaques, Macaca sylvanus, in Morocco. We compared health measures between a heavily provisioned group and a group that received negligible food from tourists and, in the former group, we also assessed health measures in relation to the intensity of provisioning. We used a broad range of non-invasive health measures relating to birth rate and survival, disease and injury risk, body size and condition, and physiological stress. Our findings indicate that feeding by tourists may overall have negative impacts on the health of Barbary macaques, being linked in particular to larger body size, elevated stress levels and more alopecia. Finally, we propose a framework to help consider the potential costs and benefits of provisioning, which may facilitate future research and management decisions on whether-and how much-provisioning is acceptable.