Primate Adaptations to Changing Environments
- Angela Findlay
- Mar 4, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 8, 2021
Professor Amanda Korstjens of Bournemouth University kindly presented her work at one of our recent online seminars.
She is also the project leader for LEAP (Landscape Ecology and Primatology) and their aim is to "develop methods for rapid assessment of forest structure and relate this to carbon stocks stored in tree biomass and habitat quality for keystone species".
She talked about climate change and human activities which can influence each other and also about predicting how primates respond to these changing environments.
Amanda began with the threat of extinction of primates across their range due to:
Destruction of forest habitats
Hunting
Trading
Monoculture
Forest fires
Climate change weather patterns
She needed to find out which factors or biological traits are involved in the presence or absence of a species in an environment before changes take place, this is to enable a prediction with the use of species prediction models.
Species distribution models were used to locate the species and to determine the environmental conditions at the locations e.g. average rainfall and temperature
These models are not perfect and its hard to find a cut-off point of when these conditions take effect
Usually there is an 85% match of the observed value matching the predicted values.
A process-based/mechanistic model will be able to tell us if they will adapt to the changing habitat or not.
Amanda went on to explain that time is easy to record, therefore the time it took for each activity below was recorded
Sleeping
Eating
Travelling
Resting and socialising
Time management is constrained, predators and temperature also play a role, and temperature influences time, so climate change is important.
Conclusion
This model shows us that temperature influences time.
The future climate makes current locations less suitable which increases a need for resting time and requires a shift to more leaves in the diet.
“We need to keep the forests and plant more trees for the animals and to help contain climate change effects”
My Thoughts
I really enjoyed this talk but it hasn't directly influenced my career choice. Her work is valuable in the fight against climate change and helping to conserve species. I understand predictive models better than I did before.
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