Bridging the Forest Gap: An Experimental Evaluation of Bridges for New World Monkeys

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Date
2014-04-15
Authors
Narvaez Rivera, Giselle
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Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression
Iowa State University Conferences and Symposia

The Symposium provides undergraduates from all academic disciplines with an opportunity to share their research with the university community and other guests through conference-style oral presentations. The Symposium represents part of a larger effort of Iowa State University to enhance, support, and celebrate undergraduate research activity.

Though coordinated by the University Honors Program, all undergraduate students are eligible and encouraged to participate in the Symposium. Undergraduates conducting research but not yet ready to present their work are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the presentation process and students not currently involved in research are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the broad range of undergraduate research activities that are taking place at ISU.

The first Symposium was held in April 2007. The 39 students who presented research and their mentors collectively represented all of ISU's Colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Business, Design, Engineering, Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and the Graduate College. The event has grown to regularly include more than 100 students presenting on topics that span the broad range of disciplines studied at ISU.

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Anthropology
Abstract

Crossing structures, commonly known as bridges, are used by conservationists to connect fragmented wildlife habitat over roads. Crossing structures show varying levels of success. One factor that may explain success, or lack thereof, is crossing structure design. We assessed three different bridge models in a semi-experimental setting. Materials, costs, and design complexities were relatively similar among the models. Two New World monkey species (Alouatta palliata, n=13; Ateles geoffroyi, n=2) in a Costa Rican wildlife sanctuary were given uniform access to the models: twisted liana, parallel lianas, and horizontal ladder. Model performance was evaluated by observing study subjects' behavior during 38 sampling hours in July 2013. In general, crossing structures were rarely used during the study period, comprising only 0.1% of all scan samples. Although adult study subjects represented 47% of the study group, adults used the crossing structures most often (89% of all cases). Overall, there was no difference in frequency of use among models (X2= 0.89, df = 2, p = 0.64). However, in 48% of cases (n=13) study subjects exhibited difficulty traveling across the crossing structures or showed signs of fear that were attributable to the crossing structures. Of this subset, the majority of problems (62%) were associated with the twisted liana model. Preliminary findings show that the ladder and parallel lianas performed better than the twisted liana, but our sample size is small and thus continued investigation is necessary for validation. For future experiments we recommend additional research on improving structural stability and incorporating living vegetation in the designs.

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