Home-range use by the Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) on Barro Colorado Island, Panamá

Abstract

This study investigates the movements and homerange of the agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. We captured and tracked 12 agoutis from January to December 2003. Home-range size (95% kernel) ranged from 1.56–2.45 ha (n = 6) for males and 1.34–1.97 ha (n = 5) for females. Agouti ranges overlapped and we estimated a density of approximately 100 agoutis km-2. We compared agouti movement with the locations of refuges and food trees, and the results suggest that the agoutis are central-place foragers. Agoutis moved an average of 850 m d-1 covering approximately 35% of their range daily. These movement data help us understand the potential impacts of agoutis as seed dispersers, predicting that D. punctata will encounter and hoard fallen fruit within 10–200 m(i.e. radius of home range) of its source, and move seeds towards refuges such as ground holes and dense vegetation around recent tree falls. We thank Kirsten Silvius, Martin Wikelski, Allan Drew and Dudley Raynal for their comments on initial drafts of this manuscript. Thanks to Ricardo S. Moreno, Paula Capece, Vilma Fernandez, Eloisa Lasso, Jason Isabelle and Lindsay Cray for assistance in the field. Thanks to Dr Egbert Leigh Jr. for his advice and help in the field, and to all the crew of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama. Enzo, thanks the Fulbright/LASPAU/OAS program, and STRI’s Automatic Radio Tracking system (ARTS) project for financial support. Thanks to Judy Kays, Tamara McGuire and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments to the manuscript.