Oral Abstract Details

Author(s):
Ruscena Wiederholt, Dr. Eric Post

Affiliation:
Pennsylvania State University

Presentation Type:
Oral

Topic Area:
Monitoring and predicting human influences on landscapes and ecosystems

Abstract Text:
Many primate species are severely threatened, but little is known about the effects of global warming and the associated intensification of El Niño events on primate populations in general or on platyrrhine (NewWorld) monkeys. Quantifying the role of climate change in the dynamics of primates is crucial because, globally, up to one-third of primate species are threatened with extinction. Elucidating the role of climate change is further necessitated by the potential for large-scale climate change to synchronize the population dynamics of widely dispersed species, which could exacerbate the extinction risk of multiple populations. Here, we documented the influences of the El Niño southern oscillation (ENSO) and hemispheric climatic variability on the population dynamics of four genera of ateline (neotropical, large-bodied) primates. The effects of large-scale climate and resource availability (tree phenology) on ateline primate population dynamics were quantified using autoregressive density-dependent models; these models were also used to assess the influences of climate on potential primate resource availability. We then examined the level of interspecific synchrony among the primate populations and quantified the role of large-scale climatic variability in synchrony. All ateline genera experienced either an immediate or a lagged negative effect of El Niño events. ENSO events were also found to influence primate resource levels through neotropical arboreal phenology; fruit and flower production were positively affected in El Niño years and negatively affected during La Niña years. Resource availability was found to have either a lagged positive, lagged negative or immediate negative effect on primate population density. Furthermore, the more frugivorous ateline primates showed a high degree of interspecific population synchrony over large scales across Central and South America attributable to the recent trends in large-scale climate. These results highlight the role of large-scale climatic variation and trends in ateline primate population dynamics, and emphasize that global warming could pose additional threats to the persistence of multiple species of endangered primates.