SIMMEN Bruno

Date: 1 June 2021 - 31 May 2023

Goal

In Mayotte, where agriculture is characterized by strong socio-economic challenges, wildlife protected by international conventions plays, according to farmers, an increasingly disruptive role. Farms are small, very numerous and they produce mainly food resources that ensure food security for families. But the rapid increase in the human population associated with deforestation and the fragmentation of forest environments intensifies interactions with wildlife, especially with frugivorous species. This competition is particularly marked concerning the Mayotte brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus), a protected frugivorous primate and emblematic of conservation on the island, whose ecological flexibility is notable. The ecological success of this lemur in the face of environmental constraints would be based on a particular management of its energy budget and its rate of activity. However, for primates in general, we lack studies on quantitative energetics in natural conditions. Similarly, taking into account the representations of nature by local actors in sustainable development projects, although widely underlined in international reports, requires a co-construction of approaches in human sciences and biological sciences. This turns out to be often an epistemological obstacle.

Crédits

B. Simmen

Objectives

This interdisciplinary program aims to document the interaction between farmers and lemurs using ethnological, faunal and ecological data, with a view to remediation involving a set of local, institutional and non-institutional actors. It aims to acquire three main types of knowledge: (a) determine the eco-ethological and physiological characteristics (food and energy needs) of the Mayotte lemur as well as the demographic dynamics (population density, group composition, one-year survival ) of this species, (b) assess the damage caused locally to food crops by this frugivorous primate on the edge of forest reserves, and (c) identify the cultural roots from which local institutions can articulate actions to preserve the species respecting agricultural practices.

Planned activities

The project involves ethno-ecologists, specialists in tropical plant formations (from the Comoros archipelago and Madagascar in particular), and specialists in animal biology and ecology, primates in particular. Interdisciplinarity is intrinsic to this project, through the study of the interactions between the biological cycle of lemurs, the cycles of cultivated and uncultivated plants (protected or not), and human activities relating to biological conservation and food security. . After the preparation and the start of the project, the demographic dynamics of the lemur of Mayotte as well as the eco-ethological and physiological characteristics of this species from observational and eco-physiological approaches will be studied. The levels of harvesting of fruit resources cultivated and planted in the polycultures of Mahoran agroforestry will be analyzed. This research will be associated with plant studies on nearby forests and the forest/agroforest ecotone, i.e. making up the main habitats of lemurs, as well as work on the representations of the brown lemur in adult cultivators and non-cultivators. The approaches in ethnobiology will aim in particular to evaluate the changes in perception of the animal since the work carried out in the years 2000-2003 (Tropical Ecosystems program ECOFOR carried by the Museum) and the current integration of this primate in the system of representation and uses of nature by the human populations of Mayotte and other actors, institutional and non-institutional.