Landscape ecology of lemurs in Madagascar

生态学的一个基本重要问题是了解植物和动物群落如何应对森林砍伐过程（森林损失，森林破碎化和边缘效应）。 在世界许多地方，森林正变得越来越支离破碎，导致边缘生境在每个森林片断中所占比例越来越大。对于马达加斯加的狐猴来说，这些问题具有特殊的生态利益和保护问题，因为人类已经将岛上的大部分原始森林转变为草原。 虽然已经开发了概念模型来预测动物群落将如何因森林丧失和破碎化而发生变化，但很少有关于热带哺乳动物的相关假设的经验测试，更不用说树栖灵长类动物，如狐猴。 我和我的学生建议把我们的研究重点放在两种日间食果动物的景观生态学上（

A question of fundamental importance to ecology is understanding how plant and animal communities respond to deforestation processes (forest loss, forest fragmentation, and edge effects). Forests are becoming increasingly fragmented in many parts of the world, which result in edge habitats comprising a greater proportion of each fragment. For the lemurs of Madagascar, these issues are of particular ecological interest and conservation concern because humans have transformed most of the primary forests to grassland on the island. Although conceptual models have been developed to predict how animal communities will change due to forest loss and fragmentation, there are few empirical tests of the associated hypotheses on tropical mammals, let alone for arboreal primates, such as lemurs. My students and I propose to focus our research on the landscape ecology of two diurnal frugivores (