Habitat shifts and refuges

Animals world over are being affected by climate change and human disturbance. Many shift habitats and ranges for food, shelter, and reproduction. If they are unable to exploit an alternative habitat or one is unavailable, they may not survive. Habitats not easily accessed by humans and therefore not easily converted to agriculture may be particularly important now and in the future as 'refuges' for wildlife whose historical ranges and preferred habitats are threatened. I think there exist two such habitat types which make particularly good refuges for primates: mangroves and peat swamp forest. The use of mangrove has been called a 'survival adaptation' for the Senegal red colobus by researchers Galat-Luong and Galat (2005) and an upcoming article by Quinten and colleagues (from the Siberut Conservation Programme) reports high primate densities in peat swamp forest. Adapting to these wetland habitats must be challenging for primates: diets may be salty or high in tannins, locomotion can be tricky along mangrove prop roots, and tide levels change. But that even the 'specialist' colobines can exploit mangroves in Africa and peat swamp in SE Asia lends some hope that these relatively more extinction-vulnerable species will persist.