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Ecological Factors Associated with Habitat Use of Baird's Tapirs (<Em University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2019 Ecological Factors Associated with Habitat Use of Baird’S Tapirs (Tapirus Bairdii) Victoria Diane Monette University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd Part of the Biology Commons Recommended Citation Monette, Victoria Diane, "Ecological Factors Associated with Habitat Use of Baird’S Tapirs (Tapirus Bairdii)" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1645. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1645 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ECOLOGICAL FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH HABITAT USE OF BAIRD’S TAPIRS (TAPIRUS BAIRDII) Master of Science Degree University of Mississippi Department of Biology Victoria Diane Monette May 2019 i Copyright © by Victoria Diane Monette ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT The Baird’s tapir, the largest terrestrial mammal in Central America and a crucial seed disperser and ecosystem engineer, has experienced a 50% loss of habitat in its geographic range during the past 30 years. Efforts to conserve this species need to consider factors that have contributed to its endangerment, such as how human presence and human-mediated habitat change may influence tapir behavior, body condition, and disease susceptibility. In this thesis I had tWo goals: 1) understand how human disturbance affects tapir activity patterns, and 2) noninvasively determine the association of disturbance with tapir health. I first compared the activity patterns of tapirs, humans, and jaguars betWeen sites with and without timber extraction and betWeen camera stations varying in human activity. Second, I investigated the association of human activity with putative parasite counts found in field-collected feces and the relationship of putative parasite counts to tapir body condition. As part of the parasitological study I compared parasites from tapirs with those found in domestic animals, and I compared the effectiveness of ethanol and formalin for long-term preservation of fecal samples. Tapir activity did not significantly differ relative to timber extraction or human activity. Tapirs were nocturnal in all sites with >80% of all tapir captures occurring betWeen 1900 and 0500 hours; however, the occasional occurrence of daytime activity at all study sites suggests the potential for tapir habituation to, or tolerance of humans. While human activity was moderately correlated with a reduction in body condition, the associations betWeen human activity and parasite load, and parasite load and body condition were not significant. There are similarities in parasite eggs and ii Worms from tapir fecal samples to those typically found in horses, but not those of cattle. Formalin-stored samples exhibited higher parasite richness and averaged more total eggs than ethanol-stored samples; however, the total worms found did not significantly differ betWeen the chemicals. Given the connection betWeen human activity and negative health outcomes for tapirs in protected areas of Northwestern Belize, research needs to expand to encompass the more fragmented habitat that tapirs may utilize across their range. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The field component of my thesis research would not have been possible Without the funding I received from The Animal Behavior Society, the McRight Biology Scholarship, the Ole Miss Biology Graduate Student Society, and a generous donation from the Robert and Arlene Houlihan Charitable fund. No words will fully express how truly appreciative I am for the many people who have offered their advice, support, and encouragement to me over the past 3 years. With their help, I have learned invaluable skills, gained friendships, and developed a confidence in myself that I did not know was possible, and for that I am eternally grateful. Without them, I would not have been able to bring this thesis to completion. First, thank you to my advisor, Dr. Richard Buchholz for his guidance in shaping my thesis research and instilling in me a better understanding of animal behavior and conservation. From our chance meeting in Belize to collaborating with me on this project to try and better understand tapirs, thank you for not losing faith in the potential of my study. I am grateful to my committee members, Doctors Marcella Kelly, Jason Hoeksema, and Beckie Symula for their advice in the development of my research and for their support during the many bumps in the road. Special thanks to Marcella and the Virginia Tech Jaguar Project for allowing me the use of her camera survey data and for helping to make field work fun, and also to Beckie for keeping iv me focused on the things I could control, and for doing an outstanding job teaching me how to run PCR and to troubleshoot with primers and PCR settings. My sincere appreciation to Dr. Colin Jackson for allowing me to cart his vortex to Belize and back, and for the use of his lab for DNA extractions. My gratitude to Dr. Ryan Garrick for letting me use his lab for PCR and running gels. Thank you also to Nicole LeWis for allowing me to borrow microscopes, and for your friendship, support, and advice for handling all the curveballs that my project threW my way. Thank you to Tyler Breech for traveling to Belize and helping me kick off my field season, and also to my local Belizean field assistants Norberto Quetzal, Rudy Thompson and Felipe Bolanos for spending your days hiking around the jungle in search of tapir poop. I am also deeply indebted to my fellow graduate students for their camaraderie. My former lab mates Caleb Dodd and Jessica Heppard for your input on the design of my study and for your unwavering support. Thank you again to Jessica and also Chaz Hyseni for their assistance with R coding and troubleshooting. Thanks to Sarah Nobles for her immense patience while teaching me how to do DNA extractions, and also for spontaneously meeting me for coffee when I needed to chat. The lab work for this project was incredibly time consuming and tedious, and completing it required the help of three amazing undergraduate students. Keely Cox spent an entire semester classifying and sorting close to one thousand microscopic nematodes, and the diligence of Tamer Alzatari and Alaina Skidmore contributed to the final push to complete the nematode sorting. v Claudio Agostinelli and Mike Meredith were kind enough to respond to my queries about problematic functions in their R packages, and even made updates to the packages so that my data would run properly. The field aspect of my study was incredibly intimidating, and there were several times When completing the analysis of my data seemed impossible. Lucky for me, I have Sean Houlihan, my wonderful fiancé who finds the silver lining in any situation while somehow managing to not drive me crazy with his optimism. In the past three years, he has been my field assistant, my motivator, my shoulder to cry on, and the guiding hand that has both supported and pushed me to complete this thesis. Lastly, thank you to my family. Being across the country added an extra stressor to my graduate experience, but it was alWays comforting to have visitors or to receive silly videos of my nieces and nepheWs. Thank you for your love and support. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS: Section Page ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x CHAPTER I: HUMAN DISTURBANCE AND THE ACTIVITY PATTERNS OF BAIRD’S TAPIR (TAPIRUS BAIRDII) AND JAGUARS (PANTHERA ONCA) IN PROTECTED AREAS OF NORTHWEST BELIZE Introduction 1 Methods 5 Results 15 Discussion 23 CHAPTER II: THE ASSOCIATION OF PARASITE LOAD AND BODY CONDITION OF BAIRD’S TAPIRS WITH THE FREQUENCY OF HUMAN ACTIVITY IN A NEOTROPICAL FOREST. Introduction 29 Methods 33 Results 42 Discussion 52 vii CHAPTER III: THESIS CONCLUSION 58 REFERENCES 60 APPENDIX 72 VITA 75 viii LIST OF TABLES: Table 1.1: Survey data for all sites from 2013-2016 7 Table 1.2: Trail camera models 8 Table 1.3: Activity pattern classifications 9 Table 1.4: Types of human activity 12 Table 1.5: Records of tapirs, jaguars and humans by site and year 16 Table 1.6: Activity pattern classifications for tapirs, jaguars and humans 19 Table 2.1: Nematode worm morphologies 37 Table 2.2: Primer information 39 Table 2.3: BLAST search results 46 Table 2.4: Parasite eggs found in tapir fecal samples 47 Table 2.5: Parasite eggs found in equine fecal samples 50 Table 2.6: Parasite eggs found in bovine fecal samples 51 ix LIST OF FIGURES: Figure 1.1: Site map 6 Figure 1.2: Histogram of the frequency of human activity at all camera stations 11 Figure 1.3: Interspecies overlap by study site 17 Figure 1.4: Interspecies overlap by survey year 18 Figure 1.5: Single species overlap betWeen logged and unlogged study sites 20 Figure 1.6: Interspecies overlap in logged and unlogged study sites 21 Figure 1.7: Single species overlap at camera stations with high and low human activity 22 Figure 1.8: Interspecies overlap at camera stations with high and low human activity 23 Figure 2.1: Map of fecal sample collection locations 36 Figure 2.2: Tapir body condition examples 40 Figure 2.3: Relationship of body condition and parasite load 43 Figure 2.4: Relationship of human activity and parasite load 43 Figure 2.5: Relationship of male tapir body condition and human activity 44 Figure 2.6: Relationship of female tapir body condition and human activity 45 Figure 2.7: Comparison of parasite richness in ethanol and formalin 46 x CHAPTER I: HUMAN DISTURBANCE AND THE ACTIVITY PATTERNS OF BAIRD’S TAPIR (TAPIRUS BAIRDII) AND JAGUARS (PANTHERA ONCA) IN PROTECTED AREAS OF NORTHWEST BELIZE.
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