ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF HUMAN DISTURBANCES ON JAGUARS AND TERRESTRIAL VERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES IN NEOTROPICAL FORESTS: THE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE AS A CASE STUDY

Lucy E Perera-Romero

doi:10.7273/000007162

A key challenge of measuring the outcomes of area-based conservation approaches in the tropics is detecting species' responses to cryptic human disturbances underneath intact forest canopy. Although studies have measured the state of species in specific areas, comparative studies between management strategies providing quantitative outcomes remain scarce, especially in the Neotropics. Here, we compare species distribution, richness, functional diversity, and faunal degradation of terrestrial wildlife communities in a community-managed forest and a strictly protected area within Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. Using multispecies occupancy models and a spatially extensive camera-trapping grid, we assess how species respond to protection and human access, a proxy for hunting and cryptic resource utilization by nearby communities. We also estimate the density of an apex predator (jaguars; Panthera onca) to determine whether the population status of a key species reflects changes in the overall terrestrial community. Although it has been proposed that the jaguar can be used as a focal species for conservation, the sensitivity of their populations or the magnitude of the response to human disturbances remains to be quantified. At the species level, we detected that for some species, the effects of human access on occupancy were stronger than the combined effects of all other habitat variables. In the community-managed forest, ease of human access negatively impacted the occupancy of tapirs and hunted species such as the great curassow, ocellated turkey, and white-lipped peccary. In contrast, smaller and more generalist species were positively associated with ease of access, possibly reflecting trophic release near human settlements. Jaguars had higher densities in the protected area than in the community-managed forest, and their density was influenced by human access. We found no differences in species richness or mean community occupancy at the community level between the community-managed forest and the protected area. With the incidence-based faunal degradation index, we found medium to low faunal degradation levels in the protected area and medium to high levels in the community-managed forest of Uaxactun. Additionally, we found contrasting differences in functional dispersion and functional divergence between the two types of protection. These findings illustrate the influence of cryptic disturbances on some species’ distribution underneath intact forests while demonstrating that management actions in the community-managed forest have helped to maintain diverse assemblages, though with medium to high faunal degradation levels and some changes to the distribution and density of key species nearest to the community. Our results provide metrics for further monitoring the integrity of wildlife communities and demonstrate the need to go beyond remotely sensed measures and delve deeper into species richness metrics when assessing and monitoring biodiversity outcomes within tropical forests.

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF HUMAN DISTURBANCES ON JAGUARS AND TERRESTRIAL VERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES IN NEOTROPICAL FORESTS: THE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE AS A CASE STUDY

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