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Mammal Study
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Abstract
Abstract.
Accurate determination of the abundance and distribution of animals, particularly endangered species, is a fundamental requirement for understanding their ecology and has important applications for their conservation. In Bornean flooded forests, various approaches have previously been used to conduct primate census, including foot-based land surveys and boat-based river surveys at different times of the day such as in the early morning and/or late afternoon. However, the accuracy of primate encounter frequencies and animal counts obtained using these methods has not been assessed. Therefore, in this study, we attempted to assess the accuracy of these methods used in different studies. We found that boat-based river surveys were more accurate than foot-based land surveys for evaluating the abundance and distribution of Bornean primates, particularly proboscis monkeys (Nasalis larvatus) and long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). Furthermore, based on our evaluation of boat-based river surveys at different times of the day, we recommend that such surveys be performed in the late afternoon to yield more accurate estimates of the abundances and distributions of Bornean primates.
We thank the Economic Planning Unit of the Malaysian Government, the Sabah Biodiversity Centre, the Sabah Wildlife Department staff, the Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Project and our research assistants (Ahmad, Udin, Hartman, Shah and Asnih) for support. This study was partly financed by the HOPE and Human Evolution Project of KUPRI, the National Geographic Society (9254-13 to IM), the Wildlife Reserves Singapore, the Sumitomo Foundation (130164 to IM), the Inamori Foundation and Grants-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (24657170 & 15K14605 to IM), for Young Scientist (26711027 & 21770261 to IM) and the Strategic Young Overseas Visits Program for Accelerating Brain Circulation from JSPS (S2508 to H. Hirai) and was conducted in compliance with animal care regulations and applicable Malaysian laws.
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