Forest ungulates are key players of vegetation recruitment dynamics, and activity and patch use patterns should affect those interactions. Human-induced land cover changes affect the amount and connectivity of native habitats, and we ask whether such landscape changes affect ungulates’ activity, and patch use patterns. In order to answer our question, we GPS-tracked herds of white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) in agricultural lands of Central Brazil. In this study, we compare activity (resting vs. moving), and frequency and intensity of patch use between herds living in areas with distinct amounts of forest cover and connectivity. For activity analyses, we use information from accelerometers placed in the GPS-collars, and associate spatial and temporal information (coordinates, date and time) with activity information (resting and moving). For patch-use analyses, we look at changes in frequency (number of visits) and intensity (time spent in each visit) of patch use, with a movement-based kernel estimation that allows a decoupling of the utilization distribution (UD) into a recursion distribution (RD), and an intensity distribution (ID). We then explore if spatial and temporal patterns of activity and patch use are associated with the amount to forest cover and connectivity of each herd’s overall area of use.
Results/Conclusions
Over the course of five years (2013-2018), we accumulated over 30,000 GPS-locations, from 30 animals, 10 herds, and three Brazilian biomes (Atlantic Forest, Cerrado and Pantanal). Preliminary activity analyses (two herds from Cerrado, and four from Pantanal) show a general pattern of animals spending about 55% of the time moving, and 45% resting. A distinctive daily pattern appears, with more resting at night and early morning (00:00 to 06:00), a small increase in movement in the morning (09:00), and a great increase in late afternoon (18:00). Yet, no clear seasonal or land-cover change patterns are associated with the amount of time spent resting vs. moving. Furthermore, areas used for resting and moving show high association with forest cover and high spatial overlap, indicating that herds use the same areas to rest and forage, predominantly within the remaining forests. Preliminary patch-use analyses from two Cerrado herds show that the herd that occupies an area with higher forest cover has larger and fewer high intensity use areas and more area overlap between months. Overall, our preliminary results suggest that land-cover changes do not affect temporal activity patterns (temporal distribution of resting vs. moving), yet it affects spatio-temporal patterns of patch use.