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Distribution, Demography, and Conservation of Lion-tailed Macaques (Macaca silenus) in the Anamalai Hills Landscape, Western Ghats, India

Kumara, Honnavalli N and Sasi, R and Suganthasakthivel, R and Singh, Mewa and Sushma, HS and Ramachandran, KK and Kaumanns, Werner (2014) Distribution, Demography, and Conservation of Lion-tailed Macaques (Macaca silenus) in the Anamalai Hills Landscape, Western Ghats, India. In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, 35 (5). pp. 976-989.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1007/s10764-014-9776-2

Abstract

The status of the endemic and endangered lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus) has not been properly assessed in several regions of the Western Ghats of southern India. We conducted a study in Parambikulam Forest Reserve in the state of Kerala to determine the distribution, demography, and status of lion-tailed macaques. We laid 5km(2) grid cells on the map of the study area (644km(2)) and made four replicated walks in each grid cell using GPS. We gathered data on lion-tailed macaque group locations, demography, and site covariates including trail length, duration of walk, proportion of evergreen forest, height of tallest trees, and human disturbance index. We also performed occupancy modeling using PRESENCE ver. 3.0. We estimated a minimum of 17 groups of macaques in these hills. Low detection and occupancy probabilities indicated a low density of lion-tailed macaques in the study area. Height of the tallest trees correlated positively whereas human disturbance and proportion of evergreen forest correlated negatively with occupancy in grid cells. We also used data from earlier studies carried out in the surrounding Anamalai Tiger Reserve and Nelliyampathy Hills to discuss the conservation status in the large Anamalai Hills Landscape. This landscape harbors an estimated population of 1108 individuals of lion-tailed macaques, which is about one third of the entire estimated wild population of this species. A conservation plan for this landscape could be used as a model for conservation in other regions of the Western Ghats.

Item Type: Journal Article
Publication: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY
Publisher: SPRINGER
Additional Information: Copyright for this article belongs to the SPRINGER, 233 SPRING ST, NEW YORK, NY 10013 USA
Keywords: Anamalai Tiger Reserve; Anamalai Hills landscape; Conservation; Lion-tailed macaque; Nelliyampathy Hills; Parambikulam; Western Ghats
Department/Centre: Division of Biological Sciences > Centre for Ecological Sciences
Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2014 05:39
Last Modified: 28 Nov 2018 15:14
URI: http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/50487

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