Forest guardians on the edge: multi-scale ecology and conservation of the lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) in the Colombian Orinoquia
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The lowland tapir (Tapirus terrestris) is a keystone megaherbivore of South American tropical ecosystems, playing key roles in seed dispersal, forest regeneration, and nutrient cycling. Its populations face accelerating threats from habitat loss, fragmentation, post-conflict agricultural expansion, and hunting pressure. The Colombian Orinoquia, a mosaic of savannas, gallery forests, and wetland systems, supports one of the most important remaining lowland tapir populations in South America yet has remained critically understudied. This dissertation presents an integrated, multi-scale investigation of tapir ecology and conservation in the Colombian Orinoquia, drawing on more than eight years of systematic camera trap surveys encompassing 32,000 trap-days across four departments. Chapter II develops the first multi-departmental habitat suitability model, identifying precipitation seasonality and land cover as the strongest predictors of tapir distribution, delineating 402 Tapir Conservation Units, and confirming probable local extinction in southern Casanare. Chapters III and IV examine tapir occupancy dynamics and diel activity using complementary frameworks: hierarchical occupancy models revealing dense forest as the strongest positive predictor and Bayesian von Mises mixture models demonstrating a conserved bimodal activity pattern across all study sites. Chapter V develops the first quantitative metapopulation connectivity framework for this system using circuit-theoretic corridor analysis, graph-theoretic patch importance assessment, and stochastic patch occupancy simulation, identifying a single critical 1,020-kha gallery forest corridor in Arauca as the structural backbone of the entire metapopulation and demonstrating that post-peace deforestation is actively accumulating extinction debt, with Arauca corridor severance producing projected cascading, non-stabilizing occupancy losses across Casanare and Vichada within a century. Together, these results provide the first comprehensive, empirically grounded conservation science framework for the lowland tapir in the Colombian Orinoquia. Urgent priorities include legal protection of the Arauca gallery forest corridor, maintenance of the Meta River as a trans-departmental dispersal axis, and community-based conservation with the traditional stewards of this landscape. The integrated analytical framework offers a replicable model for large mammal conservation planning in unprotected, post-conflict Neotropical ecosystems.
Author: Alviz, Ángela
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: green
Award: G4056809051
OpenAlex ID: W7214140441