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- Title
POPULATION STATUS AND TEMPORAL ACTIVITY PATTERN OF TWO VULNERABLE OTTER SPECIES FROM CAMERA-TRAPPING IN THE SOUTHERN WESTERN GHATS BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOTS.
- Authors
NARASIMMARAJAN, Kannadasan; HAYWARD, Matthew W.; PALANIVEL, Sonaimuthu; MATHAI, Manu Thomas
- Abstract
India is moving towards having the highest number of threatened species in th world, yet since the turn of the twenty-first century some flagship species, such as otters, have been poorly studied in their natural habitats. Here, the population and temporal activity patterns of two sympatric otter species i.e., the Smooth-Coated Otter, Lutrogale perspicillata, and the Asian Small-Clawed otter, Aonyx cinereus nirnai, were studied using 233 photographs from camera traps between March 2015 and September 2017 on the Moyar River in the Western Ghats biodiversity hotspot, India. We categorized the activity patterns of the two otter species by calculating the photo-capture rate at different seasons, and then evaluated the pooled temporal activity and overlaps by calculating the overlap coefficients. Smooth-Coated Otter temporal activity was strong late at night and before mid-day (= 95% records between 0100 and 1200 hours). Asian Small-Clawed Otter activity was primarily in the early morning and afternoon (= 95% records between 0400 and 1800 hours). We found high temporal activity overlap (Δ1≥0.75) between Small-Clawed and Smooth-Coated Otters (95% CI = 0.62-0.88). Temporal activity overlap was high because of morphological and ecological guild differences between these two otter species that suggest a lack of temporal niche segregation. In addition, the broad dietary breadth may compensate for the high temporal niche overlaps among these two otters. Activity pattern, and temporal niche partitioning among the sympatric otters by camera-trapping was useful to establish effective conservation measures for the aquatic carnivore conservation in the Western Ghats region.
- Subjects
WESTERN Ghats (India); INDIA; OTTERS; KEYSTONE species; HABITAT partitioning (Ecology); ENDANGERED species; NUMBERS of species; BIODIVERSITY
- Publication
IUCN Otter Specialist Group Bulletin, 2023, Vol 40, Issue 4, p183
- ISSN
1023-9030
- Publication type
Article