A late camera trap survey in a Togolese nature reserve has twist up the first - ever images of a live Walter ’s duiker , a bantam African antelope species , in the wilderness . The traps also get aardvarks and a mongoose species , neither of which had previously been reported in Togo . The team ’s finding werepublishedthis week in the African Journal of Ecology .
“ Camera traps are a plot record changer when it come up to biodiversity resume fieldwork , ” cobalt - generator Neil D’Cruze , a wildlife biologist at the University of Oxford , sound out in an email . “ I ’ve spend weeks rough in it in tropical timber seemingly barren of any large mammal specie . Yet when you fire up the laptop computer and stick in the remembering card from photographic camera traps that have been sitting there patiently during the entire trip-up — and see specie that were there with you the entire time — it ’s like being yield a glance into a parallel world . ”
Using tv camera traps leave the research team to quit relying on info from bushmeat hunter , who fetch carcase of the rare beast to market . Instead , to get a heart rate on the realm ’s beast , they planted 100 tv camera trap around Fazao - Malfakassa National Park in central Togo , which cut through an area a little larger than Houston , Texas . By the fourth dimension the survey concluded , the squad managed to distinguish 32 mammal species , which brings the entire telephone number of report mammal coinage in the region to nearly 60 .
Two Walter’s duikers caught by a camera trap in a Togolese nature park.Image: Assou et al. 2021
“ This elegant antelope has , for the last 200 years , displayed a great talent for avoiding scientists , but proven tragically less adept at obviate net , snares and hunt down dog , ” said Centennial State - writer David Macdonald , a zoologist at the University of Oxford and managing director of the university ’s WildCRU conservation whole , in a universityrelease . “ Plotting their whereabouts in bushmeat market place is roughly correspondent to plot the riding habit of deer in the UK by mapping their occurrence on butcher ’ slabs . ”
The small antelope joins several other antelope specie native to the park . First recognized as a new species in 2010 after liken bushmeat specimens to other known duiker specimens , the recently imaged duiker is the first live one catalogued by scientists . It is so few and far between that it does n’t even have an endangered listing ; the International Union for Conservation of Nature take down its status as “ data - inferior . ” Obviously , the WildCRU team is seeking to change that .
“ We hope our exciting uncovering — the first live image of Walter ’s duiker in the wild — will increase the call for further protective covering of our remaining forest and savannah , ” said co - author Gabriel Segniagbeto , a taxonomer at the University of Lomé in Togo , in the same press release . He emphasized recognise “ the grandness of the protected area system of Togo , which pretend as a vital stronghold for a rich diversity of uncivilised mammals . ”
The team also found an aardvark, the first spotted in the country.Image: Assou et al. 2021
fit in to the research worker , Fazao - Malfakassa National Park is the only protected expanse in the country where the African savannah and timber elephants coexist . Savannah elephant are endangered and forest elephant critically so , allot to an IUCNreportreleased last hebdomad .
That bring in on - the - ground camera trap work all the more important , as theatre biologists attempt to map out the range and extent of the protected area ’s biodiversity — duikers and all .
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