Conflicts with humans and behavioral adjustments of endangered Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) living at the edge of an agricultural landscape in Morocco.

International audience

English. Primate use of anthropogenic areas, resulting from crop encroachment at the edge of natural habitats, leads to increasing human-primate conflicts. We explore how Barbary macaques foragingin recent cherry orchard settlements adapt their behavior to face anthropogenic disturbances. Wehypothesize that macaques adjust their time-budget when using risky areas (i.e. orchards), and thatorchard visits involve mainly the least vulnerable individuals. We also aim to identify the deterrentsimplemented by farmers, and their efficiency. Activity budgets (estimated from scans, 887h) werecompared between land types. The difference of orchard use depending on age-sex categories wastested. Anthropogenic disturbances were recorded ad libitum, and we tested if the location of humanaggression (orchards vs. forest) towards macaques was related to the macaques’ closeness to theorchards one hour later. Macaques encountered 0.52/h disturbances and spent 37.5% of time inorchards, where they maximized feeding while minimizing resting and socializing (ANOVAs,alpha=0.01). Unexpectedly, all age-sex categories visited orchards in the same proportion (GLMM,alpha=0.05). Preemptively pushing macaques away from crops, when still in forest, was moreefficient than aggressing them when already in orchards (Chi², alpha=0.05). This study offers newinsight on the little-known behaviors of crop-foraging Barbary macaques and highlights their highrisk-taking behaviors compared to other primates. The violent deterrents used by farmers represent athreat to the conservation of this species. As human-primate contacts are expected to increase due toagricultural encroachment, there is an urgent need to find safer deterrents to mitigate conflicts andallow future human-primate cohabitation.