Activities
White Lipped Peccaries
The project presented proposes to evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of a changing cattle industry on key species, and their resources, in the Pantanal. Inadequate and inefficient management practices are placing great pressure on natural resources in the Brazilian Pantanal and are driving harmful habitat conversions and the decline of important landscape wildlife.
By comparing pristine regions with cattle-impacted sites, we will identify biodiversity losses, recommend habitat restoration measures, generate technical tools to improve the ranchers’ cattle management practices, and help traditional landowners with their ecotourism establishments by increasing the biodiversity on their land.
More recently, the project has been leading groundbreaking research on WLP population genetics, using microsatellites to evaluate the degree of genetic variability and population structure of WLP from two locations 80 km apart in the southern Pantanal. Analyses of these data provided the first evidence that these two populations effectively comprise a larger metapopulation, with gene flow occurring between them. These findings have profound implications for the conservation of the species.By comparing the ecology and movements of peccaries in pristine regions with cattle-impacted and deforested sites, we will identify biodiversity losses, recommend habitat restoration measures, generate technical tools to improve the ranchers’ cattle management practices, and help traditional landowners with their ecotourism establishments by increasing the biodiversity on their land.
The project has been leading groundbreaking research on WLP population genetics, using micro satellites to evaluate the degree of genetic variability and population structure of WLP from various locations within the southern Pantanal and its surrounding highlands. Analyses of these data provided the first evidence that widely dispersed WLP populations effectively comprised a larger metapopulation system, and they showed that a high degree of gene flow occurred between populations as much as 80 km apart.
These findings may have profound implications for conservation of the peccaries and other highly mobile species in the region, and target for protection, key ecological corridors important for population dispersal and gene flow. The conservation practice of prioritizing protected areas and identifying key ecological corridors via integrated genetic and ecological studies of wide-ranging landscape species, like WLPs, can potentially be applied in other regions and for a variety of conservation efforts.