Use of natural and artificial cavities by Neotropical mammals in a tropical wet forest of Costa Rica

• DOI: 10.1007/s44353-024-00014-y
• Publication Date: 2024-11-21T12:08:44Z
• Authors: Gabriela S. Vinue...; Juan Sebastián Va...; Eleanor Flatt; Carolina Pinto; Sarah Wicks; María José Mata Q...; Johan Ortiz-García; Andrew Whitworth
• Keywords: Tropical forest; Tropical rain forest; Natural forest

Tree cavities are an important ecological component of forests, used by animals for roosting, foraging, hunting, nesting, hiding, and hibernating. However, there has been a taxonomic bias toward investigating cavity use birds, geographical temperate regions. We camera traps to understand mammal in tropical rainforest. did so relation two contexts: (1) artificial early-stage restored rainforest, (2) natural old-growth detected rich community 20 species single large ground bird around -with 17 16 at each type respectively. The composition was different from that cavities. forest cameras higher diversity than those the restoration habitat. Cavity interaction, such as inspecting, or marking most species. Animals interacted similar rates with both cavities, but utilized differently. Our baseline assessment provides key insights on rainforest mammals users which revealed high representative 80% terrestrial medium reported region. As Neotropical secondary forests lack some structural components found proactive approaches actively restore features could be management tool efforts speed up faunal recovery. Even so, further research is needed fully disentangle whether associated communities patterns effect surrounding habitats due differences themselves, likely vs materials.