Chimpanzees lose their behavioral and cultural diversity

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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Prelude to global extinction: Human impact on Earth's animals

Biologists say disappearance of species tells only part of the story of human impact on Earth's animals

Date:  July 10, 2017

Source:  Stanford University

Summary:  In the first such global evaluation, biologists found more than 30 percent of all vertebrates have declining populations. They call for curbs on the basic drivers of these losses.

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Tropical marine ecosystems most at threat from human impact

Date:April 30, 2015

Source:ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies

Summary:An international team of scientists has used the fossil record during the past 23 million years to predict which marine animals and ecosystems are at greatest risk of extinction from human impact. The researchers found those animals and ecosystems most threatened are predominantly in the tropics.

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Animals in Marine Sanctuaries Not Immune to Human Impact

National Marine Sanctuaries are, contrary to what might be expected, among the most stressful places for marine predators to live along the U.S. West Coast, according to a new study.

The West Coast swarms with shipping, fishing and recreational boating lanes that can get in the way of marine animals' daily and seasonal travel routes. The cumulative effects of these direct coastal stressors — for example, boat hits to the head — along with indirect stressors of climate change and coastal development, are difficult to quantify but important to consider when developing management plans, researchers say. 

Now, a team of scientists based at the University of California, Santa Cruz have conducted the first study that maps the potential cumulative impacts of human activities on marine predators along the West Coast. They focused on animals at the top of the food chain — such as blue whales, California sea lions, leatherback sea turtles and black-footed albatrosses — because these animals play a crucial role in maintaining healthy ecosystems by preying on invasive species and helping to keep biodiversity high. 

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Human Impacts On Natural World Underestimated

May 8, 2013 — A comprehensive five-year study by University of Calgary ecologists -- which included monitoring the activity of wolves, elk, cattle and humans -- indicates that two accepted principles of how ecosystems naturally operate could be overshadowed by the importance of human activity. 

"Understanding the significance of the impact that humans have on ecosystems is a critical component in formulating long-term and effective conservation strategies," says principal investigator Marco Musiani. 

"Our results led us to believe that ecologists have underestimated the impact of humans on natural food chains. The data we collected shows that humans are deliberately or inadvertently engineering ecosystems regardless of whether they would be naturally pre-disposed to top-down or bottom-up effects. Even in protected areas, the influence of humans might be greater than we previously thought." 

Ecologists have long debated whether natural ecosystems and associated food chains are primarily regulated by predators or by the productivity of plant species, called top-down and bottom-up effects, respectively. With most of the world's ecosystems now dominated by humans, researchers from the University of Calgary sought to understand how much people influenced food chains in southwest Alberta. 

Lead author Tyler Muhly, PhD, said the study -- a collaboration between NSERC, Shell Canada, Parks Canada, the Alberta Government and the Universities of Alberta, Calgary and Montana -- relied upon dozens of high-tech animal tagging devices and motion sensor-activated cameras to study human, animal and plant distribution throughout southwest Alberta. The research area stretched from Calgary in the northeast, through to the provincial borders with British Columbia in the west and the US-Canada border in the south. "We painstakingly monitored wolves, elk, cattle and plant species, as well as humans for five years. We evaluated how these species interacted across the landscape and ultimately found that humans dominated the ecosystem," Muhly says. 

Read on: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130508172149.htm