Plants used by chimpanzees and humans in Cantanhez, Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

With chimpanzees inhabiting increasingly anthropogenic landscapes, understanding the sustainability of their interactions with people is crucial for biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing. In depth understanding of the co-utilisation of wild resources by humans and chimpanzees can be incorporated into landscape, regional and national conservation policy that acknowledges the needs of both (Bersacola et al. 2018). This enables evidence-based recommendations for the sustainable exploitation of wild plants, especially those heavily used. For example, it can reveal which plant species should be prioritised for replanting in corridors between forest fragments and which should be afforded additional protection to ensure their persistence and long-term sustainable use by humans and chimpanzees. The western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN and is an important flagship species for conservation in Guinea-Bissau (Sousa 2015). The diet of chimpanzees can consist of hundreds of different plant species, with inter-community differences in species consumed and their importance in diet. In addition to feeding, chimpanzees use wild plants for various other reasons, including to make tools, to access resources such as honey, and to construct nests whereby the branches and leaves of plants are broken and bent, then interwoven into a circular sleeping structure. Several chimpanzee communities are present in the central-southern forests of Cantanhez National Park (Hockings and Sousa 2013). This field guide focuses on one community of chimpanzees at Caiquene-Cadique with a home range of approximately 12.7 km 2 some of which lies in proximity to agricultural areas and human settlements (Bessa et al. 2015). 6 7 The human communities involved in this study were Nalu and Balanta from the villages of Caiquene, Cadique Nalu and Cabdaia. They possess in-depth botanical knowledge and have complex agroeconomic systems. The importance of wild plant resources is recognised by local people as they rely on these for reasons including their subsistence and medicinal needs, as well as for construction and fuel. Certain plants are also used in rituals and ceremonies. For this reason, plants are both vital to survival and hold cultural values (Parathian et al. 2018). Humans and chimpanzees at this site show extensive overlap in habitat selection, with both using areas inside and outside the main forest blocks. Up to now, the overlap in wild resource use by people and chimpanzees has received limited scientific attention. To examine this in shared landscapes is methodologically challenging, and requires knowledge of plants available in a habitat, and the systematic and simultaneous collection of empirical data on human and chimpanzee resource use. To do this accurately requires bridging disciplinary research approaches and expertise