Home ranges of releasedWest Indian manatees Trichechus manatus in Brazil S EB AS TIÃO S IL VA DOS S AN T O S ,IARA D OS SANTO S MEDEI R O S
VANESSA ARAUJO REB E L O,ALLAN OLIVEIRA B A RRET O CAR VALHO JEAN PAUL DUBUT,J OSÉ EDUARDO MANTO VA NI
RAP HAEL DANTA S CÍRIA C O,RYA N EME RSON GOMES DOS S AN T O S MIRI AM MARMONTEL,IRAN CAMPE L L O NORMANDE
THALMA MARIA GRISI VELÔSO and JOÃO CARLO S GOMES BORGE S
Abstract The distribution of the Vulnerable West Indian manatee Trichechus manatus is influenced by physical and environmental factors such as water salinity, temperature and depth, freshwater supply and the availability of food resources. In Brazil, information on the habitat use of this species is insufficient for effective conservation. Here, we monitored manatees that had been found stranded as calves, rehabilitated in captivity and subsequently released, to iden- tify their home ranges and examine their adaptation to life in the wild. The study, which involved monitoring six mana- tees using satellite and VHF telemetry systems, was con- ducted during 2016–2019 in the states of Paraíba, Sergipe and Bahia in north-eastern Brazil. Home range size of indi- viduals was 2.56–42.07 km2 and all fidelity sites (areas used most frequently) were within protected areas. The longest distance travelled from the coastline upriver was 14.24 km and the longest distance offshore was 0.93 km. There were no significant differences in home range data between the dry and rainy seasons, but there was significant difference between the sexes, with males travelling across larger areas than females. All but one of the six individuals met the majority of indicators established in the Brazilian Manatee
SEBASTIÃO SILVA DOS SANTOS*(
orcid.org/0000-0003-0194-2975), IARA DOS SANTOS MEDEIROS*(
orcid.org/0000-0002-7467-5970), VANESSA ARAUJO REBELO*(
orcid.org/0000-0001-7139-7189) and ALLAN OLIVEIRA BARRETO CARVALHO (
orcid.org/0000-0002-8274-2416) Aquatic Mammals Foundation, Recife, Brazil
JEAN PAUL DUBUT,JOSÉ EDUARDO MANTOVANI (
orcid.org/0000-0003-1719-
3833), RAPHAEL DANTAS CÍRIACO (
orcid.org/0000-0002-8047-4542) and RYAN EMERSON GOMES DOS SANTOS ( Natal, Brazil
orcid.org/0000-0002-4214-5457) Nortronic,
MIRIAMMARMONTEL (
orcid.org/0000-0003-3747-9548) Mamirauá Sustainable Development Institute, Tefé, Brazil IRAN CAMPELLO NORMANDE (
MARIA GRISI VELÔSO Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, Maceió, Brazil
JOÃOCARLOSGOMESBORGES* (Corresponding author,
orcid.org/0000-0002-0033- 6781,
jcgborges@hotmail.com) Aquatic Mammals Foundation, Pernambuco, 52.051-305, Brazil
*Also at: Graduate Program in Ecology and Environmental Monitoring, Federal University of Paraíba, Rio Tinto, Brazil
Received 18 September 2020. Revision requested 22 January 2021. Accepted 26 May 2021. First published online 31 January 2022.
Reintroduction Protocol, and thus were considered to have successfully adapted to the wild. Our study provides information on patterns of habitat use and areas intensely used by manatees, which can assist protected area man- agers in defining priority areas for manatee conservation in Brazil.
Keywords Brazil, distribution, Endangered, fidelity site, habitat use, protected area, sirenian, telemetry
Introduction
orcid.org/0000-0003-3613-947X) and THALMA
(ICMBio, 2018) and as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List (Deutsch et al., 2008). Along the Brazilian coast, manatee populations are patchily distributed from Amapá to Alagoas (Luna et al., 2008; de Lima et al., 2011) and there is evidence of released animals using the coasts of Sergipe and Bahia states (Deutsch et al., 2008). The distribution of manatees is influenced by physiological (nutrition and me- tabolism; St Aubin & Lounsbury, 1990) and environmental factors (water salinity, temperature and depth, and avail- ability of food resources; Lefebvre et al., 2001), freshwater supply (Favero et al., 2020) and anthropogenic habitat mod- ifications (Deutsch et al., 2008). Manatees prefer naturally sheltered areas such as coves, bays and estuaries and are sensitive to disturbance caused by the construction and operation of cities, ports, marinas, shipyards, salt works, shrimp farms and other anthropogenic structures and activ- ities in these areas (Aquasis, 2016). Such habitat modifi- cations are associated with an increase of manatee calf stranding events along the north-eastern Brazilian coast (Parente et al., 2004; Meirelles, 2008; Medeiros et al., 2021). Without access to undisturbed estuaries, females give birth in open water, where newborns may become separated from mothers and stranded on the coast (de Lima et al., 2011). Stranded calves found alive are transferred to one of three rehabilitation facilities in north-eastern Brazil (Meirelles, 2008). After an initial health assessment, they are kept in in- dividual pools for a quarantine period of c. 2 months, and
T
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Oryx, 2022, 56(6), 939–946 © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S003060532100079X
he West Indian manatee Trichechus manatus is cate- gorized as Endangered on the Brazilian Red List
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