Using Resource Selection Functions (RSF) to model the sleeping site selection by an endangered Atlantic Forest primate

• Grant number: 18/09148-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: October 05, 2018
• End date: December 13, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Laurence Marianne Vincianne Culot
• Grantee: Leonardo Henrique da Silva
• Supervisor: Mark S Boyce
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Alberta, Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 17/06608-1 - Sleeping sites selection by black lion tamarins: a comparison between continuous forest and fragment, BP.MS

Abstract

Sleeping sites are a limiting and important resource for primates that spend half of their lives sleeping. The selection of sleeping sites is important, especially for black lion tamarins, Leontopithecus chrysopygus, because they enter a state of torpor during the night, which may require a more refined choice for safe sleeping environments. Resource selection by black lion tamarins can be inferred by the Resource Selection Function (RSF), which attempts to reveal the different proportions of probability of use of a resource unit by animals compared to the resources that are available in the environment. In this context, the present work aims to investigate how the black lion tamarins select their sleeping sites and whether there is divergence in the characteristics and the selection process of sleeping site between a continuous forest and a fragment. Our hypotheses are that (i) predation, (ii) thermoregulation, and (iii) forest structure, affect the sleeping site selection process by black lion tamarins. We studied two groups of black lion tamarins, one in a continuous forest and one in a fragment, in Pontal do Paranapanema (State of São Paulo, Brazil). We located the sleeping sites through daily monitoring of the two groups by radiotelemetry (VHF) for 9 months. We determined the physical characteristics of the sleeping sites and of the available resources, in 20 plots of 20 x 20m, randomly distributed within both territories. To determine how black lion tamarins choose their sleeping sites in a continuous forest and in a fragment, we will use the RSF. This project will highlight the strategies of sleeping site selection of a threatened species and if these strategies change in environments with different characteristics