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Seasonal Habitat Use of Agoutis ( D asyprocta azarae ) is Driven by the Palm Attalea phalerata in Brazilian Pantanal
Author(s) -
Cid Bruno,
OliveiraSantos Luiz Gustavo R.,
Mourão Guilherme
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
biotropica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.813
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1744-7429
pISSN - 0006-3606
DOI - 10.1111/btp.12012
Subject(s) - dry season , palm , wet season , abandonment (legal) , biology , tropical and subtropical dry broadleaf forests , habitat , ecology , agroforestry , geography , agronomy , physics , quantum mechanics , political science , law
Resource availability can influence animal movement causing changes in home‐range size and arrangement between seasons. We investigated the influence of acuri palm ( Attalea phalerata ) on the occupancy of agouti Dasyprocta azare during both the dry and rainy seasons, as well as the abandonment probabilities in the transition between seasons in the Brazilian Pantanal. The agoutis occupied a high proportion of the forested areas in the rainy season (0.83), but the occupancy decreased in the dry season (0.39). In the rainy season, occupancy by agoutis was not correlated with acuri palm availability, while in the dry season, it was positively correlated with the palm's availability. The acuri palm availability also drove the agoutis' probability of site abandonment from the rainy to the dry season, with higher abandonment probability in sites with low acuri palm availability. These findings show that this large‐seeded palm can be an important resource for the agoutis' populations during the fruit‐scarcity period. The acuri palm seeds may be particularly important for agoutis using fragmented forests, given that the large‐seeded palms are able to persist even in small fragments, which is untrue for other important resource.