Know Your Monkey: Identifying Primate Conservation Challenges in an Indigenous Kichwa Community Using an Ethnoprimatological Approach.

Increasing pressure on tropical forests is continually highlighting the need to find new solutions that mitigate the impact of human populations on biodiversity. However, developing solutions that can tackle the drivers of anthropogenic pressure, or at least take them into account, hinges upon building a good understanding of the culture and perceptions of local people. This study aims to provide an overview of the ethnoprimatology of an indigenous Kichwa community in the Ecuadorian Amazon that maintains a traditional lifestyle but also has good access to markets. We examine whether primates are seen as a distinctive group and their relative importance as sources of bushmeat and as household pets. Pile-sorting exercises revealed that although locals generally group members of the order Primates together, tree-dwelling non-primates including sloths, coatis, kinkajous and tamanduas are also frequently classified as 'monkeys'. The perceived importance of primates to the forest and the community lay more in their potential as bushmeat, and only 1 respondent identified an ecological role for the group in terms of seed dispersal. Gaining a better understanding of local perceptions will allow for better-informed conservation decisions that are more aware of potential impacts and are more likely to gain community support.

A validated agent-based model to study the spatial and temporal heterogeneities of malaria incidence in the rainforest environment.

BACKGROUND: The Amazon environment has been exposed in the last decades to radical changes that have been accompanied by a remarkable rise of both Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax malaria. The malaria transmission process is highly influenced by factors such as spatial and temporal heterogeneities of the environment and individual-based characteristics of mosquitoes and humans populations. All these determinant factors can be simulated effectively trough agent-based models. METHODS: This paper presents a validated agent-based model of local-scale malaria transmission. The model reproduces the environment of a typical riverine village in the northern Peruvian Amazon, where the malaria transmission is highly seasonal and apparently associated with flooding of large areas caused by the neighbouring river. Agents representing humans, mosquitoes and the two species of Plasmodium (P. falciparum and P. vivax) are simulated in a spatially explicit representation of the environment around the village. The model environment includes: climate, people houses positions and elevation. A representation of changes in the mosquito breeding areas extension caused by the river flooding is also included in the simulation environment. RESULTS: A calibration process was carried out to reproduce the variations of the malaria monthly incidence over a period of 3 years. The calibrated model is also able to reproduce the spatial heterogeneities of local scale malaria transmission. A "what if" eradication strategy scenario is proposed: if the mosquito breeding sites are eliminated through mosquito larva habitat management in a buffer area extended at least 200 m around the village, the malaria transmission is eradicated from the village. CONCLUSIONS: The use of agent-based models can reproduce effectively the spatiotemporal variations of the malaria transmission in a low endemicity environment dominated by river floodings like in the Amazon.