Remote Sensing Technology Is Used to Map Monkey with Hominid like Behavior

Remote Sensing Technology Is Used to Map Monkey with Hominid like Behavior

Biologists are fascinated by the applications of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) to the characterization of wildlife habitats as an area of growing significance for conservation.

Remote sensing and habitat mapping for bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus): landscapes for the use of stone tools” explains how researchers applied remote sensing and geographic information systems to the characterization of capuchin habitat, as an initial step in identifying and protecting their range.

Capuchin monkey habitat model: Final maximum entropy habitat model with warmer colors representing areas of higher habitat suitability for bearded capuchin monkeys and cooler colors representing lower suitability. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing doi:10.1117/1.JRS.9.096020 (© the authors)

Capuchin monkey habitat model: Final maximum entropy habitat model with warmer
colors representing areas of higher habitat suitability for bearded capuchin monkeys
and cooler colors representing lower suitability.
Journal of Applied Remote Sensing doi:10.1117/1.JRS.9.096020 (© the authors)

The article by Allison Howard of the University of Maryland Department of Biology and the University of Georgia Center for Geospatial Research and co-authors at both schools and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center appears in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

Scientists are eager to study this behavior especially because it resembles the stone tool use of early hominids — are concerned the monkeys will lose critical habitat as industrial agriculture is rapidly expanding and intensifying in the region. They seek a way to set priorities for their protection.

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Scientists examine the use of space of a group of bearded capuchin monkeys, a species unique in their use of stone tools to extract encapsulated foods. They define important landscape variables associated with the monkeys’ behavior, especially the use of stone tools.

The team started by observing capuchins in the study area, a flat, wooded plain punctuated by steep vertical scarps and plateaus. For three months, observers tracked one individual monkey at a time for nine and a half hours a day, using a tablet computer with GPS to record that monkey’s activities (foraging, locomotion, social behavior, remaining stationary, self-grooming, etc.) and the animal’s location on a georeferenced satellite image. The geographic coordinates and behaviors of individual capuchin monkeys were recorded 8,611 times over 27 days.

Multispectral satellite images of the study area were used to identify land use/land cover (LULC) elements relevant to the movement of capuchin monkeys, such as vertical scarps and areas of human influence.

By using satellite image derivatives such as normalized difference vegetation index, researchers were able to map the density of vegetation in the study area. The other variables evaluated in model building include elevation, distance to roads, distance to areas of human influence, distance to vertical scarps, land cover/land use class, and percentages of green vegetation, bare soil, and shadow from spectral mixture analysis.Maximum entropy modeling is used to define the landscape characteristics associated with the monkeys’ use of space.

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The study concluded that the distance to areas of human influence and distance to vertical scarps were the variables most closely associated with capuchin habitat suitability (permutation importance 31.7% and 21%, respectively).

 The monkeys spent significantly more of their time foraging in dense vegetation, probably because of the abundance of food there, but also possibly because the vegetation provides protection from aerial predators.

Stone tool use occurred in areas of lower elevation and higher percent green vegetation relative to other behavior. The authors hope that their results will inform conservation efforts for the unique stone tool use of this species.

SPIE 

Citation: Allison M. Howard ; Nathan Nibbelink ; Sergio Bernardes ; Dorothy M. Fragaszyand Marguerite Madden – “Remote sensing and habitat mapping for bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus): landscapes for the use of stone tools”, J. Appl. Remote Sens. 9(1), 096020 (Aug 19, 2015)

Categories: Remote Sensing

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