caa a22 4500 605527318 CHVBK 20210128100807.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150901xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10531-015-0931-7 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10531-015-0931-7 Large mammal diversity and their conservation in the human-dominated land-use mosaic of Sierra Leone [Elektronische Daten] [Terry Brncic, Bala Amarasekaran, Anita McKenna, Roger Mundry, Hjalmar Kühl] Like elsewhere in West Africa, the landscapes of Sierra Leone are strongly human-dominated with consequences for large mammal distribution and diversity. Sierra Leone is currently going through a phase of post-war recovery, with accelerating development of the mining, forestry, agricultural and infrastructure sectors. As environmental issues are increasingly considered, comprehensive biodiversity information is required. Here we evaluate spatial patterns of large mammal diversity throughout Sierra Leone to make inferences about species persistence. We used systematic line transect sampling for assessing large mammal distribution. GLMs and canonical correspondence analyses were used to evaluate the relative importance of human impact for every species while controlling for environmental gradients and to make countrywide spatial model predictions. We further developed an algorithm to identify core distributional ranges for the most common species. A total of 562km of transects were surveyed and 35 large mammal species encountered. Species diversity was impoverished in the country's south and center and strongly increased towards the north and east. Human impact did not determine the distribution of four species (brushed-tailed porcupine, bushbuck, giant rat, warthog), but was very influential on chimpanzee and yellow-backed duiker occurrence with U-shaped and negative responses, respectively. The remaining species showed mixed responses to human impact and environmental gradients. Predicting species persistence in West African human-dominated landscapes is complex. Pooling of species for land-use planning is therefore not recommended. Our study provides key information for land-use planning to separate areas with post-depletion species assemblages from more diverse regions with high conservation value. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht, 2015 Core distributional range areas nationallicence Distribution nationallicence Hunting nationallicence Line transect nationallicence Post-depletion nationallicence Spatial model nationallicence Brncic Terry World Resources Institute, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo aut Amarasekaran Bala Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Freetown, Sierra Leone aut McKenna Anita Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Freetown, Sierra Leone aut Mundry Roger Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany aut Kühl Hjalmar Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany aut Biodiversity and Conservation Springer Netherlands 24/10(2015-09-01), 2417-2438 0960-3115 24:10<2417 2015 24 10531 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-015-0931-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-015-0931-7 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Brncic Terry World Resources Institute, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Amarasekaran Bala Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Freetown, Sierra Leone aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- McKenna Anita Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Freetown, Sierra Leone aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Mundry Roger Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Kühl Hjalmar Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Biodiversity and Conservation Springer Netherlands 24/10(2015-09-01), 2417-2438 0960-3115 24:10<2417 2015 24 10531