Ring‐tailed lemurs in Madagascar 165


FIG. 1 Locations of the 83 surveys for the ring-tailed lemur Lemur catta conducted during June 2018–August 2019 in southern Madagascar. Supplementary Table 1 contains the corresponding site names and numbers. Extant and historical L. catta distributions are from the IUCN Red List (LaFleur & Gould, 2020). ‘New survey’ refers to data from this study for sites for which there are no other published surveys. ‘Resurvey’ indicates sites for which other published surveys are also available (Supplementary Table 1). ‘Confirmed population’ indicates sites where species presence has been confirmed despite being previously identified as likely locally extinct (Gould & Sauther, 2016; LaFleur et al., 2016).


unit comprising one or more villages) throughout the Mahafaly Plateau, a vast region of south-western Madagas- car where surveys for this species have been insufficient (LaFleur et al., 2016; Fig. 1). The sites surveyed around the Mahafaly Plateau lack the infrastructure for conducting line transect sampling;we therefore used broad surveymeth- ods following Sussman et al. (2003) to count individuals at sleeping sites (see Supplementary Material 1 for full details). Weutilized broad surveymethods because of their ability to generate comparative datasets at low cost over relatively short periods of time and their utility for confirming the presence and relative numbers of the population of a species within a proscribed area (Muckenhirn et al., 1975). The combined results from our surveys confirm the


presence of L. catta at 65 (78.3%) of the 83 sites.We identified a minimum of 792 L. catta individuals in total (summing only the maximum group size across sites; Supplementary Table 1) and as many as 1,221 individuals (using estimated population counts) from 104 groups at 60 sites (Supplemen- tary Table 1). Our estimates at four sites in the Mahafaly


Plateau (Vintany, Andranoilovy,Grotte Maiky andAndranovao South) corroborate the findings presented in a recent report (Kasola et al., 2020). Furthermore, we confirmed the pres- ence of L. catta at a further five sites on the Mahafaly Plateau (Antsono, Ankamena, Andramaniloke, Marohazo and Vohindambo), although individuals were obscured from view,making accurate counts impossible. Local guides indicated L. catta was present at the remaining 18 sites, although our surveys did not confirm this. Among our surveys were three sites where L. catta populations were believed previously to be locally extinct or nearly extinct: Zombitse, Vohibasia and Fiheranana (Supplementary Table 1). As in a previous study (La Fleur et al., 2016), we did not detect L. catta in Zombitse Forest, but we did confirm presence at both Vohibasia and Fiheranana forests. At Vohibasia, which was last surveyed in 2007 (Siers, 2007), we observed 10 individuals, thus indi- cating species persistence in this region, albeit at low dens- ities. We observed a total of 40 individuals in five groups at Fiheranana; local guides suggest that additional L. catta


Oryx, 2024, 58(2), 164–166 © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323000273


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