Habitat use by felids in a continuous Atlantic Forest area

• Grant number: 14/11650-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2014
• End date: March 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Eleonore Zulnara Freire Setz
• Grantee: Mariana Ferreira Rossi
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Felids have a great influence on community structure in tropical forests because they are predators. As such, understanding how felids select habitat and differ in their niches help to guide conservation management actions for the whole local community. This study investigates how felids use environmental characteristics to understand niche partition in the dimension of space use in Serra do Japi, São Paulo, Brazil. We established a virtual grid of 45 points regularly distributed with 1.5 km between them. Each point is a sample site, where we walk trails and roads for ca. 1 km, gathering scats in three visits in the dry season and three in the rainy season. We use GPS (Global Position System) to georeference the samples. Each species will be identified by fur microscopic technique. We will use GIS (in software Quantum Gis 1.8 QGis) to map roads and river basins of the study area. Hence, we will investigate the influence of each ecogeographic parameter (types of road, vegetation, and water bodies) in the occurrence of felid species in Serra do Japi.