Rabeau, A. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2025

Sustainable cattle management by communities supports African wildlife

Community-based conservation (CBC) initiatives aim to reconcile biodiversity protection with local livelihoods, yet their effectiveness in protecting wildlife remains uncertain, often hinging on local management1,2. We evaluated a globally significant CBC model in Kenyas Greater Maasai Mara Ecosystem (GME), where conservancies, run jointly by Maasai landowners and the tourism sector, employ rotational cattle grazing to support both wildlife and pastoralism3,4. Using a [~]1200 km2 grid of 180 camera traps across gradients of livestock pressure in Maasai Mara National Reserve and three conservancies in 2018, we collected and analysed over 2 million images with a customised AI-powered pipeline. We found a positive impact of observed cattle pressure on mammal community occupancy and species richness, except for at the highest levels of cattle grazing. However, sheep and goat grazing and proximity to infrastructure had a negative impact. These results provide evidence that wildlife and pastoralism can coexist under community-led stewardship5, but only with active management and targeted control of emerging threats. AI tools such as our image classifier may contribute to more adaptive community-led management of these areas6. As conservation policy shifts beyond formal protected areas, our findings support CBC as a scalable model for conserving biodiversity within working landscapes, offering a pathway to meet global targets while maintaining local livelihoods7.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Projected impacts of climate change on plant-frugivore interactions across the Americas

AimFrugivorous animals provide crucial seed-dispersal functions in terrestrial ecosystems. However, the potential effects of climate change on the interactions between plants and frugivores are largely unknown. In this study, we map plant-frugivore interactions across the Americas and then project potential changes in this interaction diversity under future scenarios of climate change. LocationNorth, South and Central America. Time PeriodPresent (1980-2010) and future (2070-2100). Major Taxa StudiedFrugivorous birds and fruit-bearing plants. MethodsBased on a trait-matching framework, we estimated interaction probabilities between frugivorous birds (n = 629 species) and fruit-bearing plants (n = 3283 species) to construct ecoregion-level plant-frugivore networks. To estimate future climate impacts, we compared the climatic niches of birds with ecoregion climates and weighted interaction probabilities based on the overlap between avian climatic niches and current and future ecoregion climates. Lastly, we used simulations to examine how avian dispersal and dietary flexibility may buffer the future diversity of plant-frugivore interactions. ResultsUnder future climate scenarios, our models projected a decline in interaction diversity across most ecoregions, especially in tropical and subtropical ecoregions and biomes. In addition, simulations indicated that interaction rewiring through dispersal and dietary flexibility had the potential to mitigate future losses of interaction diversity, particularly in tropical forests. Main conclusionsOur results suggest that plant-frugivore interactions are at risk of losing diversity under continued rapid climate change, which may undermine their stability and resilience. However, projected losses of interactions depend on the capacity of frugivorous bird species to modify their ranges or dietary preferences in future. As it is unknown to what extent these factors can buffer the stability of future interaction networks, the maintenance of high plant-frugivore interaction diversity in current networks is crucial to buffer ecosystems against future climatic changes, especially in the tropics.

ecology↗