By hunting for primates, humans may create an ecological ripple that makes the hunted regions permanently unsuitable for the animals.
Ola Olsson at Lund University in Sweden and his colleagues looked at six sites in three protected areas in south-eastern Nigeria. Three of the sites were well protected from hunters, and had more than three times as many primate groups and more than twice as many fruit-tree seedlings as the hunted sites. The researchers suggest that with many fewer primates eating fruits and dispersing the seeds by spitting and defaecation, fruit trees do not reproduce as well in hunted areas. As these hunted forests age, the lack of seedlings will mean the dying trees are not replaced, and primates will be unlikely to find enough to eat.
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Primates hunting leaves forest scar. Nature 495, 412 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/495412a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/495412a
