"Conserving lemurs & their forest habitat in Madagascar" by Krista Milich & Emily Wroblewski

Thank you very much. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. So of the Krista and Emily, I am the Krista and Emily will be going next. Um, and I want to highlight before we start a couple of things. One, I will say that this project really came out of our mom's passion for having someone study lemurs at the site of Voiday. And we are so grateful that he was so persistent in finding primatologists because that means that Emily and I, and our students and trainees have gotten the opportunity to study lemurs at a site where they were never studied before, which is incredible. And most people as a primatologist, I can say most primatologists cannot say that. So this has been a really wonderful opportunity. The other thing that we want to highlight in our talk is that this is a true collaboration. We have learned so much from each other and the science is better because of it. So this is not just a collaboration where we rely on each other for logistics, but instead we are actually informing the work that each other is doing. And that has been huge. So you'll see in our talk that some of the work we are doing is related to understanding what plants the lemurs are eating and then focusing forest restoration efforts on those species that the lemurs are eating and even using the lemurs to help propagate those seeds for replanting and also thinking about the ways that people are using the habitat and impacting the forest in a way that has implications for lemurs and plants alike, as well as just being able to bounce ideas off each other in terms of community outreach and other activities. So we are very grateful for the collaboration. We're very grateful to be invited to be part of this and to have MBG as co-workers in this, providing that insight into the plant biology that we don't have. So this project includes a large team, including several trainees, two postdocs that you can see over here, Giovanna and Patricia, who's here. Giovanna, who I think is online. Four Malagasy PhD students pictured here with Giovanna, Ortega, Unza, Laura and Rina, as well as guides and trackers at the sites where we work. And we've benefited greatly from having this large team that gets to interact at different levels and bring different expertise to the project. So we are working in Madagascar, where most of you probably know that over 90 percent of the wildlife is endemic and over 80 percent of it of the natural areas have already been lost. And so we are definitely dealing with a conservation emergency. The remaining forests are fragmented. They are separated, which means that there are limited resources. There's genetic isolation of the animals in them. There are human activities that are impacting the species there. There's increased disease exposure and extreme climate events that can affect these forests. And there's also changes not only for individual species, but also the interaction of these species, like, for example, changes in predator prey dynamics. So we are interested in understanding how these conditions impact endangered lemur populations and what we can do to help them. We are focusing on two critically endangered lemurs, the diadem shefock and the black and white ruffed lemur. The diadem shefock eats both fruit and leaves and is active during the day. And they live in these female dominated groups of multiple males and multiple females with between two and eight individuals. The black and white ruffed lemurs focus more on fruit. They are active during the day, but they're also considered cathemeral, being active at different different times around the clock. They live in these communities of subgroups, so subgroups then can combine into larger communities. And they have this kind of fission fusion dynamic that you may have heard about in other species, like, for example, chimpanzees. We are studying these two species in progress, two different sorry, something just popped up on the screen at two different field sites in Madagascar, Batampina Strict Natural Reserve and Voie Bay Forest, which is the site where we work at with MBG. These two sites are really interesting to compare because Batampina is an isolated forest fragment that's been isolated for decades. However, it is very well protected, so it has a higher protection status than Voie Bay Forest. This is a site where the Madagascar Fauna and Flora Group has worked for a long time, as well as the St. Louis Zoo. And in this site, we know that there are 11 species of lemurs, including the two that we are studying, and the populations we're studying are small and in decline, particularly for the she-fock, which have low offspring survival. And we'll show you some of those data today. Voie Bay Forest is part of a larger forest corridor. So it's better connected. It's been managed by the Missouri Botanical Garden for decades through Armand. And prior to us starting to work there, it was estimated that there were 10 species of lemurs, and we now have pretty much confirmed that that's the case. But the population status of the species we're studying is unknown. So the fact that we have this isolated forest fragment that's in decline made it clear that it's a real conservation concern there. So we were concerned about how to restore and improve conditions for lemurs at Batampina, and then also how to protect and manage the existing lemur populations at Voie Bay so that they do not become in this emergency situation that we see at Batampina. And the nice thing is that we can learn from each other, right? So what we see happening at Voie Bay can inform how we should restore Batampina, and the work that's already been done on these species in Batampina can help inform what we do at Voie Bay. As I mentioned, Batampina is a well-protected forest island. So in many ways, the lemurs have a lot of protection there. However, they have genetic isolation, and that's a concern, and likely related to the low infant survival that we see. Voie Bay is on this corridor, which means that there's better connectivity, but there are certainly concerns about the human activities there and the protection status for the habitat for the lemurs. So for our larger project, we've been looking at comparing Batampina and Voie Bay to understand the behavioral ecology, population dynamics, population genetics, and health of these two species. And we want to ask how food resources and diets compare between the two sites, and if there's differences in ranging patterns and space use. Also looking at differences in group and population dynamics between the sites. And if there's less genetic diversity in Batampina, where it's been isolated for so long, and if there are any microbial differences or differences in parasitic infections between the two sites. And ultimately, we want this to inform our work on conservation. So we're going to present some of our results today on the behavioral ecology and population dynamics of these two sites. For the fieldwork, we had the four Malagasy PhD students and our field teams collect data for two years on three groups of each species at each site. Plus, you'll see a little indicator there that there was a fourth group because of a fissioning event in Voie Bay. We collected behavioral and ecological data from dawn to dusk, including five minute scans of behaviors, all occurrences of behaviors of interest, as well as GPS points every 15 minutes and any information on feeding, ecological data and the health and group composition of our study species. And we also worked with MBG to do food plant identification. And when looking at group composition and home range size between Batampina and Voie Bay, we found some interesting differences. So first of all, I want to highlight just the status that we're going to talk about, which is a one one year of the two year of two years of data collection where we have very comparable data between the two sites. So 27 total individuals at the top of Diadem Sheefock and 27 individuals of black and white rough lemurs. The exact numbers here vary a bit. And part of this is related to the fewer individuals at Batampina for Sheefocks. And then we have 319 observation days and 304 observation days for each of the species across the two sites, again, trying to get some comparative data for these different species. And then for GPS points, we also have a comparable number of GPS points which will present to show you differences in how they're using their space. So we looked at group composition, including group size and the composition, which we update monthly for each species at each site. And then the home range size. So the individuals and groups looking at adults only for these home ranges at each site. And what we found was that Sheefock have smaller groups in Batampina than in Voie Bay. But the subgroups of rough lemurs were not smaller in Batampina than they were in Voie Bay. And I want to just point out that for the black and white rough lemurs, we weren't studying whole communities. So what we can say about this is somewhat limited, but at least for the subgroup sizes that they were forming, they were similar between sites, whereas the Sheefock had much smaller groups in Batampina compared to in Voie Bay. So even looking at this, here we have a site where these animals hadn't been studied before and you're seeing larger groups and a really healthy looking group composition for the Sheefock compared to at Batampina. We also looked at how these different groups ranged and overlapped. So here we have the Sheefock groups in orange and the black and white rough lemurs in blue on each map. Here is Batampina, here is Voie Bay. At Batampina, there is not overlap between our Sheefock study groups and our black and white rough lemur study groups, whereas there's lots of overlap. They're using similar parts of the forest in Voie Bay. And this here, these red dots are actually we were fortunate enough to be able to watch a male disperse out of the group that he had been in. These white dots are where he went and looked around to see which other group he would like to join and decided ultimately to come over here and form his own group where he met up with a female and has a new group. So that was really exciting for us to be able to to document that. OK, so we also found that the Sheefock have larger home ranges than the subgroups of roughed lemurs, but we did not find a difference between the two sites. So the Sheefock are using larger areas than the roughed lemurs. But when you look between the two sites, Batampina on the left of each of these and Voie Bay on the right, there aren't significant differences between the sites. And then we looked at density. So we found that Sheefock density is lower at Batampina than at Voie Bay. But the black and white roughed lemur density was comparable. So here are those black and white roughed lemurs. Here you can see the density of Sheefock is much higher at Voie Bay compared to Batampina. And I'll just point out again, we're talking about a critically endangered species. Right. So this is really important that we have this site now where we're able to study these animals, where we're seeing more individuals than we see at the site where they've been studied for a long time. If we look at the births and infant survival that we recorded during our study, here at the top are the Sheefocks and here are the black and white roughed lemurs. So we have the number of births and then the total number of groups that that's representing. So for Voie Bay, there were seven births of Sheefock across four groups and four of those infants across three groups survived. Does that make sense to everyone? OK, great. With the black and white roughed lemurs at Voie Bay, there were nine births across three groups and seven out of those nine across those three groups survived. Batampina, the numbers look very different. So there was one Sheefock in one group that was born and we lost that individual. So a net gain of zero for the Sheefock born at Batampina. And then for black and white roughed lemurs, there were three individuals across two groups and those three individuals did survive. So you can see some differences here across species, but also very much across the two sites. And I think, you know, one thing that we'll talk about as we go through this talk is that we really hope that the things that we're finding at Voie Bay may influence any conservation status or protection status of that forest. So to sum up the first part of our talk, for the group composition and dynamics, we found that those Sheefock groups are larger and more dynamic and have more births in Voie Bay compared to Batampina. Black and white roughed lemur groups are the same size between forests, but there are more births in more births. Yes. And losses in Batampina. Yeah. OK. And then for the home range size, the Sheefock have larger home ranges than the black and white roughed lemurs, but we didn't see differences between those two sites. So what that means in terms of population density, we found that the Sheefock were at lower densities in Batampina and they had smaller groups that still required large home ranges in Batampina. The black and white roughed lemurs were at similar densities and had similar home range requirements between sites. So we think this highlights some differences between the species, but also some flexibility in these animals to adjust to different types of forests and different conditions and points out that there may be some effects of different degrees of isolation. And with that, I'm going to pass it to Emily. OK, so I am the Emily half of the duo today. So something that was really opportunistic and unexpected as we were conducting our study was differences related to predation and specifically predation by the Fusa that we see here on the left, which is a mass small to medium sized carnivore related to the mongoose and predation specifically on the Diademe Sheefock. So we noticed over the same 19 month period of study between Batampina and Voivode in Batampina, we observed five, we had five direct observations of Fusa predation on those Sheefock and those those predation events had pretty serious consequences. So we observed four attacks that we directly witnessed, our team directly witnessed, one of which was successful. And then we had a fifth detection of a body with evidence of Fusa predation. So you see here our groups are already relatively small size. And then predation events where it's death by predation had significant effects on group size. And we also had other evidence of missing adults. And ultimately, for BP10, which is in the middle, yes, we lost that group via these population dynamics. So that was very unexpected. And so all of this suggests or could suggest that Voivode is is much better than perhaps than Batampina, despite the difference in protection status. But as Krista said, and just to reiterate, this forest does have a different protection status than Batampina and lemurs still face real threats, such as mining, as well as Tavi, which is the local term for slash and burn agriculture. So they still, despite overall appearing to do better in comparison to Batampina, still face some serious threats. And in that way, we hope this work will help lead to some increased protection for this population. And as Krista also mentioned, this is where the importance of our collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden, Armand and his team has been absolutely essential in order to start to tease apart how lemur diet and habitat variation contribute to both species and site differences. So this is actually from our 2019 site visit pre-pandemic and before the delay of our project because of the pandemic. So, for example, this is an image from when the botanical team from Armand's MBG Madagascar team went to Batampina to help us with botanical specimen identification. So that was done specifically by the botanical garden botanist Sandrita Andrianarilu, sorry, and also botanist Aina Razantsema. And also you see members of the Madagascar flora and fauna group, fauna and flora group, excuse me, or MFG, their botanical agents that were also assisting the team and field assistance as well over a several month period. And so while they were doing this work, so in addition to the identification work that they were doing at Foy Bay, they went to Batampina and while at Batampina, they were training field assistants in terms of how to collect specimens and how to prepare specimens for herbarium storage. And also the MBG team was also training the MFG botanical workers in assisting them with their skills and increasing their skills for botanical identification because we noticed that they were able to resolve identification to a different degree of specificity. And so the expertise of the MBG Madagascar team really, you know, enabled some increased specificity in the identification of the plants that the lemurs were eating. So they had a Herculean undertaking to do. So this is a plot of the number of flags that we had placed on plants consumed by both species of lemurs in Batampina on the left and Foy Bay on the right across the different groups. So several thousands of flags to process, which is incomprehensible to me as someone who does work that's quite different. So they had an amazingly large task to undertake and they've already completed much of that work. So this is just an example of the plant identification data that they had before and after that the MBG team went to Batampina to do that survey work. So you can see that the number of species or genera eaten by the lemurs of either the shefock or the variegata, rough lemurs, you can see before versus after the MBG team went to do this identification and processing. And you can see that for diadema at the Batampina reserve, we have more than doubled our identification numbers of the species that they're eating. And we've increased it also for variegata, not quite as much, but still increased it. And there's still a bit of identification more to go. So another thing that is really exciting that we're undertaking is thinking about how to characterize space and space use by the lemurs in another way to resolve more details. So graduate student Leslie Page, who's here in the audience, has been thinking about lemur spatial ecology. And oftentimes for primatologists, we have had to categorize or assess space use in two dimensions rather than three dimensions, even though those animals are absolutely moving in a 3D environment. So often in older papers, you see you see plots that look like this in terms of thinking about lemur movement and space use, when in fact lemurs are moving in that vertical, horizontal space. Certainly there have been long term efforts to try to over the years to try to characterize variation in space in a greater detail, considering vertical dimensions as well as those just left, right, north, south kind of directions that involved people doing line transects where they might walk that transect and try to mark different categories of height. What are there things present at that height or not? This very much makes me think of my 1980s games in terms of graphics. Right. But we're moving into something like this where we have drone based imagery and specifically LIDAR technology, which is the light detection and ranging sensing technology that enables us to categorize forest structural variation in three dimensions and in far greater detail. So we're really excited about this. And this is where marrying the information that we have about the individual plants, where they are located with that GPS data, and now being able to associate that information with 3D structural variation is going to be incredibly powerful with thinking about lemur spatial ecology. And this is the slide that always takes a moment because we have hopefully some fun videos for you to see. So this is the results of pilot work from this summer where Leslie, graduate student Leslie Page here, she's in the audience, trained Sondertal, the MBG botanist, in how to fly these complicated drones. And we did a pilot study over the summer in Envoy Bay where we surveyed three lemur ranges. So let's see if I can get these to play. And this is not with the LIDAR, but just a standard phantom drone, but still with very high resolution imagery. But with that imagery, Leslie was able to create three-dimensional models. See if I can get them to play. Maybe not. Oh, that's right. I need to go over here. There we go. Thank you. So this is going to go. Give us an understanding of lemur movement and space use over a much more refined scale, considering that three-dimensional structure. And so this is already with just those simple photographs, but pretty amazing resolution and giving us that sense of the topography and variation and tree height and all those different tree characteristics that will really be able to help us understand the preferences and usage patterns of lemurs and thinking about restoration targets in a far more specific way. So who knows what those random videos are? No, they're coming up. But hopefully moving from those flat 2D images to something that's more like this, where we have this insane amount of resolution with which to not only understand the lemurs, but hopefully also benefit the garden and thinking about their restoration efforts on the botanical side. Again, being able to marry those specific plant identifications with GPS coordinates and thinking about really understanding the forest at a far greater resolution than ever before. As Krista said, also, we're using this collaboration to benefit restoration in other ways. So, for example, our postdoctoral scholar, Dr. Giovanna Bonadonna, was able to get a successful grant from Conservation Nation to facilitate forest restoration with seeds that were collected specifically from the feces of rough lemurs. So they passaged through the guts and then were planted, cultivated and ultimately used to restore degraded areas. So over 600 seeds or seedlings from those collections have been planted in degraded areas. So an incredible restoration effort. And that passage through the lemur gut has been really important for actual germination success. And so when I was just there over the summer, the MBG staff were talking about how shockingly different it was in terms of the successful planting that they had from that project. So to sum up, we view this collaboration as so mutually beneficial. And so we are really working in partnership with the Botanical Garden to proactively protect Huey Bay before it reaches extreme crisis, as we see in the Batampina population. And so we hope the data that we collect from the lemurs and understanding of that ecology and interaction between flora and fauna will help their forest restoration efforts and guide their patrolling efforts for conservation purposes. The funds that we've been able to get as part of our collaboration has also been used to increase research station infrastructure at Huey Bay to facilitate these types of long term studies for not just the lemur folks, but also hopefully the botanical folks as well, as well as anyone else who wants to study other species at this site. So we've been able to add a boat to facilitate transport. We have satellite Internet, now Starlink, so slightly different than this now even, but additional housing and buildings as well. So hopefully this is mutually beneficial. And on the other side, we are also working in partnership with MFG to conserve Batampina lemurs as well, using the data that we generate to understand why they're struggling, support their forest restoration efforts as well. And then ultimately, if they are, they are planning and trying to facilitate translocation of shifaka into Batampina. So if that ends up happening, we hope that our data will supplement and support and guide that effort to do so in an informed way. Also, there's other conservation benefits. We're very proud that this project is supported for Malagasy students who will attain PhDs, three of which are women. It supports the training and employment of multiple Malagasy assistants and other staff. And we're really excited that because of our collaboration with Armand, we also have this amazing connection to the University of Antananarivo. So really expanding these partnerships beyond to really extend this impact. And so with that, we have many people to thank. Washington University and the Living Earth Collaborative really provided foundational support for this project with the vision of Jonathan Lassos and the support of Andy Newman and other staff and the Evelyn P. And sorry, Eric P. And Evelyn E. Newman Charitable Foundation for their generous support. On the St. Louis Zoo side, who has interacted closely with Batampina over decades, Lisa Kelly has an instrumental partner in this, as well as Armand and his team at the Missouri Botanical Garden here, as well as in Madagascar. MSG folks, very numerous. And of course, all of our partners at the university and Madagascar, and of course, Madagascar National Parks as well. So thank you so much for your time. And we'll take questions.