Human
impact reduces the behavioral repertoire of chimpanzees
Date: March 7, 2019
Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology
Chimpanzees
exhibit exceptionally high levels of behavioral diversity compared to all other
non-human species. This diversity has been documented in a variety of contexts,
including the extraction of food resources, communication and thermoregulation.
Many of these behaviors are assumed to be socially learned and group-specific,
supporting the existence of chimpanzee cultures. As all other great apes,
chimpanzees have come under enormous pressure by human activities, leading to a
change of the natural environment. Their prime habitat, tropical rainforests
and savanna woodlands, are increasingly converted to agricultural farmland,
plantations and settlements, or otherwise degraded by the extraction of natural
resources and infrastructure development.
Much of
the empirical work and resulting debate on the loss of wildlife biodiversity
has been conducted in the context of species decline or loss of genetic
diversity and ecosystem functions. However, behavioral diversity is also a
facet of biodiversity. Due to limited empirical data, until now it had been
unclear whether behavioral diversity would similarly be negatively affected by
human impact.
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