Landscape factors and allochthonous congeneric species influenceCallithrix auritaoccurrence in Brazilian Atlantic Forest remnants

Abstract

AbstractThe buffy‐tufted‐ear marmoset (Callithrix aurita) is a small primate endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest biome, and one of the 25 most endangered primates in the world, due to fragmentation, loss of habitat, and invasion by allochthonousCallithrixspecies. Using occurrence data forC. auritafrom published data papers, we employed model selection using Akaike Information Criterion corrected for small samples and cumulative AICc weight (w+) to evaluate whether fragment size, distance to fragments with allochthonous species, altitude, connectivity, and surrounding matrices influence the occurrence ofC. auritawithin its distributional range. Distance to fragments withC. jacchus(w+ = 0.94) and nonvegetated areas (w+ = 0.59) correlated negatively withC. auritaoccurrence. Conversely, the percentage of agriculture and pasture mosaic (w+ = 0.61) and the percentage of savanna formation (w+ = 0.59) in the surrounding matrix correlated positively withC. auritaoccurrence. The findings indicate thatC. auritais isolated in forest fragments surrounded by potentially inhospitable matrices, along with proximity of a more generalist and invasive species, thereby increasing the possibility of introgressive hybridization. The findings also highlighted the importance of landscape elements and allochthonous congeneric species forC. auritaconservation, besides indicating urgency for allochthonous species management. Finally, the approach used here can be applied to improve conservation studies of other endangered species, such asC. flaviceps, which is also endemic to the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and faces the same challenges.