fauna

The Silky Sifaka (Propithecus candidus), found only in northeastern Madagascar, is a large lemur that is one of the rarest of all mammals, threatened in its limited range by both habitat destruction and hunting.

Learn more on Encyclopedia of Life

Images: Jeff Gibbs, Wikimedia Commons

Endangered primates and cats may be hiding out in swamps and mangrove forests

by Jeremy Hance

What happens to animals when their forest is cut down? If they can, they migrate to different forests. But in an age when forests are falling far and fast, many species may have to shift to entirely different environments. A new paper in Folia Primatologica theorizes that some 60 primate species and 20 wild cat species in Asia and Africa may be moving from rainforests to less-impacted environments such as swamp forests, mangroves, and peat forests.

“Where primates and felids face forest habitat disturbance, they may need to shift habitats, diets, activity patterns,” author of the paper Katarzyna Nowak with Princeton University told mongabay.com. “In areas with swamp forests—like areas with hard to reach mountaintops—these taxa can find safety and shelter in the flooded forest, which may be less disturbed than the adjacent upland forest.”…

(read more: MongaBay)                         (Photos: Rhett A. Butler)

Drill baby drill! The fate of African biodiversity and the monkey you’ve never heard of

Commentary by: Zach Fitzner

Equatorial Guinea is not a country that stands very large in the American consciousness. In fact most Americans think you mean Papua New Guinea when you mention it or are simply baffled. When I left for Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea, I also knew almost nothing about the island, the nation, or the Bioko drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus poensis). The subspecies of drill is unique to Bioko Island and encountering them was an equally unique experience. I initially went to Bioko as a turtle research assistant but ended up falling in love with the entire ecosystem, especially the Bioko drills as I tagged along with drill researchers.

Bioko itself looks a bit like a bean; if the bean was 779 square miles, made out of dormant volcanoes, covered in lush rainforest and floating in the Atlantic off Africa’s west coast that is. The island is part of the Cameroonian line, a chain of dormant volcanoes extending west from the mainland. Ten thousand years ago rising sea levels cut off a peninsula, creating Bioko, which is the main island of Equatorial Guinea, a small Spanish-speaking nation in equatorial, western Africa. Bioko has a population of about 260,000 spread throughout some 26 cities arranged mostly near the coast.

But Bioko is also a refuge for wildlife, including seven species of monkey and eleven subspecies, hidden away in the rough interior of the island. Wildlife biodiversity and endemism (species found only on the island) are high because Bioko is in the tropics, and an island with a relatively low human population. The Bioko drill is arguably the island’s flagship species…

(read more: MongaBay)                                (photos: Drill Films)

Strongest Evidence of Animal Culture Seen in Monkeys and Whales

by Michael Balter

Until fairly recently, many scientists thought that only humans had culture, but that idea is now being crushed by an avalanche of recent research with animals. Two new studies in monkeys and whales take the work further, showing how new cultural traditions can be formed and how conformity might help a species survive and prosper. The findings may also help researchers distinguish the differences between animal and human cultures.

Researchers differ on exactly how to define culture, but most agree that it involves a collective adoption and transmission of one or more behaviors among a group. Humans’ ability to create and transmit new cultural trends has helped our species dominate Earth, in large part because each new generation can benefit from the experiences of the previous one.

Researchers have found that similar, albeit much simpler, cultural transmission takes place in animals, including fish, insects, meerkats, birds, monkeys, and apes. Sometimes these cultural traits seem bizarre, such as the recently developed trend among some capuchin monkeys to poke each other’s eyeballs with their long, sharp fingernails—a behavior that originated among a small group of individuals and which has spread over time…

(read more: http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/strongest-evidence-of-animal-cul.html?ref=hp)

(photo: (top, monkies) Erica van de Waal; (bottom, whales) Jennifer Allen/Whale Center of New England; Jennifer Allen/Ocean Alliance)

Cinderella animals: endangered species that could be conservation stars

Jeremy Hance

A cursory look at big conservation NGOs might convince the public that the only species in peril are tigers, elephants, and pandas when nothing could be further from the truth. So, why do conservation groups roll out the same flagship species over-and-over again?

Simple: it is believed these species bring in donations. A new paper in Conservation Letters examines the success of using flagship species in raising money for larger conservation needs, while also pointing out that conservation groups may be overlooking an important fundraising source: “Cinderella animals.

“Too much focus on “flagship species”?

Flagship species are animals used by conservation groups to raise funds; these species are almost always mammals, large, and appealing to the general public, often defined as ‘cute.’ This trend has long faced criticism: some researchers argue that in an age of mass extinction focusing on a few mammals trivializes the scale of the problem and leaves the bulk of the world’s threatened species without targeted protection…

(read more: MongaBay)

(photos: T - Pygmy Raccoon by Scott Camazine; TR - Pennant’s Red Colobus Monkey by Richard Bergl; B - Somali Wild Ass by Bigstock)