Differential impact of severe drought on infant mortality in two sympatric neotropical primates.

ABSTRACT: Extreme climate events can have important consequences for the dynamics of natural populations, and severe droughts are predicted to become more common and intense due to climate change. We analysed infant mortality in relation to drought in two primate species (white-faced capuchins, Cebus capucinus imitator, and Geoffroy's spider monkeys, Ateles geoffroyi) in a tropical dry forest in northwestern Costa Rica. Our survival analyses combine several rare and valuable long-term datasets, including long-term primate life-history, landscape-scale fruit abundance, food-tree mortality, and climate conditions. Infant capuchins showed a threshold mortality response to drought, with exceptionally high mortality during a period of intense drought, but not during periods of moderate wate

SUBMITTER: Campos FA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7211846 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature