The Udzungwas

The Udzungwas
Forest bathing
Nights punctuated by hyraxes’ rivaling calls
Shine your searching torch – there are orange galago eyes, treefrogs and the timid to and fro chameleon dance of a new dwarf.
With morning come deep throated bellows of a Sykes monkey male – is he alone or with a group? How far? How early is it? You check your watch.
Fresh duiker pellets ahead – was it a blue or a red? What frightened it – you or a leopard?
Across your path dashes a pair of rufous and black long-nosed giants – they too follow a path – a sengi tunnel near which
A camera trap lies on its side, the gesture of a forest-dwelling savanna elephant
How big are their groups in the Parinari forest?
You enter dense Aframomum, a smell of ginger entices your bite into its red fruit
Suddenly, loud wing flaps above – which hornbill was it? Silvery-cheeked!
By afternoon, you all are thirsty, you stop to eat chapatis by a slow-moving river, indulging in a few momentary glimpses of black-and-white coats of unknowing colobus, once knowing, disappearing clumsily from view.
Stopping allows you to admire fully the enveloping canopy above while you merge with the forest floor. Relief.
Then you climb again, until the sun-drenched ridgetop, where along an elephant trail are fresh piles of buffalo and kiti moto dung. The tall grass cuts at your arms, but you barely feel it – the view – ah, the view: Rolling endless green hills, don’t ever end.
And downhill again, toward the hums of another stream and a mangabey whoop-gobble and scream leaving Tabarnaemontana fruit for someone else to eat.
Still in the leaf-litter a satiated viper coils in camouflage, let him be.
Now towards camp, voices and smell of fire, a splash in the icy vigor of riverwater joined by wagtails, followed by warming blazes of fresh red pilipili on a heavy plate of maharage and wali. Tumeshiba.
Coolness of another night. Another story of the Udzungwa boys. The time we climbed a sapling to elude a lion – the sapling bowed to the ground; the cavalier lion had gone away anyway. Or the time we were lost after the arduous climb up Luhomero peak – who chose this short-cut? Or that night at Tembo camp when we slept in fear of reach of a blazing forest fire. Stories become legends, re-told but not embellished – no need. All pause at the hoot of an African wood owl – they are bahati mbaya! They are not!
The morning awakens with a mixed chorus of chipper chirps of flitting sunbirds, a distant striped kingfisher, and busy cooks. Chai and Africafe.
Soon you will spot the red colobus’ red caps across a valley, not far from the African crowned eagles’ nest, as you crunch down on the orange crabshell in otter dung, and stone-skip the width of the Lumemo with your eyes locked on the reassuringly ever-looming Mwanihana peak.

Rock-Art Rock

Above the rock-art rock

The hyrax has a view

Above the martin’s nests

Where little swifts come to rest

under the overhang.

Over rock-speckled hills that roll with reds and yellows

Brimstone canaries perch, conspicuous

against the dry rugged bush

Rocks morph into giraffes and antelopes, shapes too old

                 to make out

Abstruse

Like the copper belly of a cordon bleu orange from a dust bath

Confounding the amateur birder

Who startles

A half dozen prinia explode from the base of a tree and scatter

in arid hiding places

As an augur stops on acacia treetops

A euphorbia blackens against a dusk sky

As the bat-hawk glides in among the symphony of swifts

At twilight

above a sleeping desert rose.

The Bwawa

The green-brown water of the bwawa still carries a wild current
Even though nets of all types are stretched across it
     or plunged into it to catch a few small fishes -
     bright orange-tailed pelege
Boys with buckets take its water
     and a pipe takes more.
The feral dog cools itself in it as
Moorhens skulk in its tall green rushes
     which dance with Iringa's breezes before
     being pulled to weave and wind as thatch.
Barn swallows and white-winged widow birds
     roost in what remains.
A cattle herd moves in, the water browns again.
Another fishing line is cast from
     gardens of domestic plants
     which flank its sides, its water used
     to quench them in dry season sun.
Activity slows finally at dusk
     but not before a band of naked boys takes one last swim -
     a white-backed duck dives
     the monitor retreats
     and purple heron leaves.
From all sides, it shrinks
How long before it dries?
How long before it's quiet?
Kihesa Kilolo Bwawa still lives.

land's end

the yellow Earth with rifts, ridges, rims
painted by an evening sun
watered by a scattered rain
orange bison calves beckon to motherly grunts
their long limbs stiff from sleep
it's time to move.
ahead, the people gather predicting the grizzly's path
as her golden-tinged cubs wrestle and roll toward thick blue-green sage, almost camouflaged
and still ahead a gray wolf abandons an elk carcass
goldeneyes display on a quiet lake
whose water is tilled in V-shape
as a young beaver glides to pause at a log most distant from land's end
where for a moment
pausing is
  the only thing to do.

Facultative species turn into obligate in forested wetlands

Facultative species in wetland habitat are not strictly confined to the wetland (i.e. are not obligate) until perhaps they are endangered by habitat loss in the surrounding landscape such as the Florida panther or the Bengal tiger, or the threatened species in forested peat swamps in SE Asia: orangutans, sun bears and clouded leopards. Perhaps these species become obligate out of necessity (their survival depends on it). According to Stoneman (1997), several mammal species in peat forest occur outside their previously known ranges including the marbled cat and slender tree shrew. For how many species is such a habitat shift actual, rather than an artifact of survey effort (i.e. how many species' distribution maps actually include wetland areas such as mangroves, which are so difficult to survey)? And how do species previously occuring only in terrestrial ecosystems adapt to successfully exploit the wetland (e.g. do they 'follow the tides')? I thought that these are questions which we'd have more time to pursue being that forested wetlands support old growth more than do adjacent upland forests (according to Aram Calhoun, author of Forested Wetlands in Maintaining biodiversity in forest ecosystems) as they are relatively difficult to access and log and to convert to agriculture. But the IUCN has just recently issued a press release on the state of the world's mangroves, and their future is bleak- even more bleak than peat swamp? These wetland habitats are still refugia for some threatened upland species, and the time to figure this into our valuation of these ecosystems is NOW.

Elephants are ecotonal species where humans aren’t a threat

Elephants are considered to be well-adapted to the ecotone. They have been described as ‘edge species’ with a liking for the ecotone between forest and disturbed area, at least where fresh water is available.  Although their former use of a greater variety of habitats is acknowledged, they are still described by some as favoring ecotones with an "interdigitation of grass, low woody plants, and forest” over continuous forest, where they are thought to live at low densities. 

While this certainly appears to be the case in general, the exception may be where human poaching threat is high and elephants take refuge in forested areas where they appear to feel equally at home in high canopy forest as in a habitat mosaic. The ecology of savanna elephants in Afro-montane forest is little studied in E. Africa, and while some populations move between open and closed habitats, others are resident in closed forest year-round. So how does an ecotonal species successfully exploit undisturbed forest? The old networks of elephant trails, and their intersections, in forests may provide some good clues. 
Until we know more, generalizations should not be made when describing elephants' effects on sympatric species. Likely, the cascade effects that ensue a local extinction of elephants will be more detrimental to biodiversity than the community-level changes that take place after elephants have modified vegetation where they are compressed into small reserves. Linking local populations is key; here are two of the best papers on the subject: van Aarde & Jackson 2007 and Gillson and Lindsay 2003. 
For more on elephants' need for refugia see Graham et al. 2009.

Ecotones as refuges

In a recent Opinion piece in TREE entitled 'Agroforestry: a refuge for tropical biodiversity?', Bhagwat from the Oxford University Centre for the Environment and colleagues combine two ideas that have appeared on this blog: ecotones and refuges. They discuss the value of unprotected areas, specifically agroforestry systems- where trees and shrubs are grown in combination with crops- to the conservation of wildlife in human-dominated landscapes. Farms with trees can provide wildlife habitat outside of formally protected areas as well as connect reserves. As discussed in an earlier post, farms that attract wildlife could be viewed as having potential for agro-tourism and, if converting to agro-forestry would also mean decreasing crop losses, then such a scheme could be advantageous to farmers. What we need to learn is if the costs to farmers of having e.g. howling monkeys in their coffee plantations do not outweigh the benefits accrued from agroforestry, agrotourism and conservation. Ideas on how to evaluate such situations are needed, so post one here if you have one!

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.

Why flexible 'specialists' can't be indicator species too

The capacity to shift habitat and diet by such supposed 'specialists' as red colobus makes me question the use of red colobus as indicators of forest health in some regions of Africa. Some primatologists claim that these behavioral adjustments of red colobus are temporary and that what we are seeing is a time lag between response and ultimate population crash. However, in some cases, extinction has long been forecasted and species persist. Many of them persist in altered landscapes - human-induced ecotones. The Zanzibar red colobus is one such species - an exceptional example of a species that ticks many of the vulnerability traits predisposing it to extinction (island endemism, fragmented habitat, persecution, specialized morphology) and yet adapts through innovative, flexible and opportunistic behavior.

Ego Fluidity

Maybe there IS something to Mr. Hyde. Could he be our id, as suggested here?

Permit into Nature

Restless

Mesmerized at the view which summons

Which tears at fibres of a soul which yes! is at the essence of me

I jerk at the trumpeter’s boastful call and face the mountain,

is it hazy or are my eyes inoperative from idleness, from deskbound futility

The green evokes a rush of reminiscing tears, and for a moment I am engaged with the only landscape able to make me feel

My insides rebel and scream, but my body stays still like an institutionalized automa

While even the parched blades of red grass are roused

by fluttering bronze manikins

Allow me a moment of misery as I am denied revival

as I grudgingly turn my stiff back on the rapture of arching trees

and deposit my spirit back into fetters out of sunlight’s caress

Wanting nothing more than a passport into, no! a residence permit, in Nature.

Why I must see mankind about this, I will never understand.

Should I be like the bushpig which left its foot in the snare to be free?

Some benefits and drawbacks of fluidity

Behavior is the most flexible component of our phenotype. It can readily change on cue. This change can and often is reversible.

Ways by which human beings can enhance their behavioral flexibility include role-play and improvisation. Both can help an individual to evade becoming and staying ‘habit-bound’. Or so goes Peter Lovatt’s hypothesis.

At one end of the spectrum, therefore, we can expect habit-bound individuals who are unable and/or unwilling to improvise or engage in role-play and may, as a result, become ineffective communicators. On the other end are those whose entire identity, in perpetual flux, relies on improvisation and the taking on of roles (a process which in itself can become habit) – maintaining such a behavioral range can be costly and incompatible with pair-bonding (see Robin Dunbar's new research). Mostly, human beings fall somewhere in the middle and e.g. employ improvisation upon assuming new roles, or, famously, when playing a piece of music.

Does improvisation necessarily require a departure from our so-called ‘behavioral’ or perhaps ‘cultural’ norm? Is role-play precluded by a penchant for pretense, deception, or Machiavellian intelligence? Will pantomiming sharpen our minds?

Are non-human primates capable of improvisation?

Frederick Ferre said that what distinguishes living systems from the non-living is that, ‘they are capable of novelty, improvisation, evolution, growth – in a word, creativity. This is their defining characteristic’ (Ferre, p. 331 in Being and Value: Toward a Constructive Postmodern Metaphysics). I think that the difference between human and other living beings is that the latter are superior in knowing when to employ their latent fluidity while the former have an under- or over-developed (Jekyll/Hyde syndrome) or misplaced fluidity within (or because of) their particular environmental (social, cultural) context.

Some researchers (Jablonka et al., 1995) maintain that in an especially stochastic environment, phenotypic carry-over effects or the persistence of a specific phenotype, despite changes in conditions, is adaptive. This may be synonymous with instances in which even our behavior is not fast enough in keeping up with environmental change and we adhere to an existing plan of action without regard to new, external cues (in extreme cases, 'learned helplessness', although this entails inaction rather than the persistence of previously reinforced courses of action/behavior). In choosing when to be flexible, discriminating between reliable and unreliable cues may be key.