Tropical acoustic diversity. Monitoring of a seed disperser, the white throated toucan
Diversité acoustique tropicale. Surveillance d'un disperseur de graines, le toucan à gorge blanche
Résumé
Seed dispersers play a key role in the structure and dynamics of tropical forests. In the context of Anthropocene, with direct (defaunation) and indirect (habitat degradation) impacts on wildlife, monitoring seed disperser populations is crucial for tropical conservation. Ecoacoustic is an emerging and promising discipline to monitor populations over large temporal and spatial scales. Here, we tracked in a lowland forest of French Guiana the populations of a major seed disperser, Ramphastos tucanus, in a context of human pressure (hunting, logging, agriculture). We deployed an acoustic survey based on nine automatic recorders over 29 days at the beginning of the rainy season. We also gathered weather data and described with GIS tools the habitat used by R. tucanus around each device. The vocalizations of R. tucanus were automatically identified in 22901 recordings through a template matching method that had an area under the curve (AUC) of the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve (ROC) of 0.9184. The variation of vocal activity at spatial and temporal scale was assessed with a generalized mixed model. The automatic system detected a total of 1748 vocalizations. The rainfall could have a positive delayed effect on vocal activity so that R. tucanus seems to be more active before heavy rains. There is a diel pattern of R. tucanus vocalization with two peaks at 6 am and 6 pm. There was no major effect of habitat on vocal activity due to a few differences between recording sites. There was a higher vocal activity in the highest logged site compare to the agricultural one. Acoustics was a reliable strategy to monitor toucans as it revealed a clear temporal pattern and indicated a human footprint impact. This later impact could be related not only to the toucans but to the interaction within a community of seed dispersers.