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Home range of a male jaguar spatially associated with the landfill of the city of Playa del Carmen, Mexico

  • Alberto González-Gallina , Mircea G. Hidalgo-Mihart EMAIL logo , Freddy Pérez-Garduza , Jesús A. Iglesias-Hernández , Adán Oliveras de Ita , Andrés Chacón-Hernández and Octavio Vázquez-Zúñiga
From the journal Mammalia

Abstract

Understanding how jaguars (Panthera onca) adapt to disturbed landscapes, especially urbanized areas, can help us prevent adverse situations, thus reducing conflict, and perhaps even achieve coexistence with these predators. Playa del Carmen, a city located in the middle of a natural corridor linking two jaguar conservation units (JCUs; Sian Ka’an and Yum Balam), is facing intense pressure from tourism-related city growth. From January 2013 to March 2014, we tracked an adult male jaguar using a satellite collar and found that the presence of the Playa del Carmen landfill had a clear influence on a male jaguar’s home range and movements. We observed that this particular jaguar had the smallest seasonal home range and core areas reported in the literature (particularly during the dry season in 2013, where the home range was only 16.22 km2 and the core area was 2.5 km2) and also that the seasonal core areas overlapped with the area covered by the landfill (with a number of important locations within the landfill). Our results showed that male jaguars are surviving in areas previously not considered as jaguar habitat and are taking advantage of the human resources within. We hope that these results encourage more jaguar studies to be carried out in areas disturbed by human activities.

Acknowledgments

This study was made possible by the support and funds granted by Sistemas Estratégicos para la Gestión Ambiental SEGA S. A. de C.V in charge of the biological survey for the highway project “Ramales Cedral-Tintal, Tintal-Playa del Carmen con una longitud de 54 km en el estado de Quintana Roo, México”. The project was sponsored by Ingenieros Civiles Asociados, Infraestructure Division (ICAi) through the Mayab Consortium. We thank the División Académica de Ciencias Biológicas de la Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco for logistical support in the realization of this project. We specially thank all the landowners of the ejidos of Agua Azul, Benito Juárez, Cedral, Laguna de Costa Rica, Guadalupe Victoria, Héroes de Nacozari and El Tintal for allowing us to do our research in their land. We are grateful to those who helped with capturing the jaguar: A. Rivera, F. Zavala, E. López, A. de la Torre de Lara, S. Carrillo, M. Tobler and D. Simpson; and to the veterinary team: I. Cassaigne, S. Ortiz Amador, S. Ilescas, O. Lofer and B. Portillo. We thank CONACYT for graduate studies scholarship number 335814/232663 awarded to A. González Gallina who is studying at the Instituto de Ecología A.C.

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Received: 2016-5-25
Accepted: 2016-12-13
Published Online: 2017-1-23
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

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