Influência das características estruturais e vegetacionais de fragmentos de floresta com araucária na ocorrência de Alouatta guariba clamitans

Abstract

Forest loss and fragmentation promote the reduction, isolation and change in the community structure of remaining patches, thereby affecting habitat quality for arboreal primates. In this study, we evaluated whether spatial and vegetation characteristics of Araucaria forest fragments immersed in an agrosilvopastoral landscape in south Brazil are good predictors of the occurrence of brown howler monkeys (Alouatta guariba clamitans). We also used this information to fit the set of subpopulations into a metapopulation model. Twenty-six forest fragments (0.2-28.2 ha) were surveyed on a monthly basis (January-June 2013) for the presence of howler monkeys. Howler monkeys were found in 13 fragments (50%). Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that the best model for explaining the occurrence of howler monkeys is the set of interrelationships including fragment size, distance to the nearest road and the proximity index. However, fragment size appears to be the major factor limiting the long-term permanence of howler monkeys in the study region. Fragment size and density of Araucaria angustifolia differed significantly between occupied and unoccupied fragments. Because fragment size influenced the presence of howlers, but the distance to neighboring forests did not, we believe that this set of subpopulations best fits a source-sink metapopulation model. Although Araucaria forest fragments <7 ha are capable of sustaining isolated groups of brown howler monkeys, we suggest that the long-term persistence of their small populations has a lower viability than populations inhabiting larger habitat patches. Therefore, the long-term conservation of brown howlers in Araucaria forests requires the maintenance of continuous forests or large forest tracts, the prevention of habitat loss in the remaining fragments, and an increase in the connection between remaining habitat patches to enable or facilitate gene flow among discrete subpopulations.