Impact of food availability and predator presence on patterns of landscape partitioning among neighbouring Guinea baboon (Papio papio) parties.

Background: Access to critical resources, including food, water, or shelter, significantly determines individual fitness. As these resources are limited in most habitats, animals may employ strategies of landscape partitioning to mitigate the impact of direct resource competition. Territoriality may be regarded as an aggressive form of landscape partitioning, but other forms of landscape partitioning exist in non-territorial species. Animals living in groups with greater flexibility in their association patterns, such as multilevel societies with fission-fusion dynamics, may adjust their grouping and space use patterns to short-term variations in ecological conditions such as food availability, predation pressure, or the presence of conspecific groups. This flexibility may allow them to balance the costs of competition while reaping the benefits of better predator detection and defence.

Methods: We explored patterns of landscape partitioning among neighbouring Guinea baboon (Papio papio) parties in the Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal. Guinea baboons live in a multilevel society in which parties predictably form higher-level associations ("gangs"). We used four years of locational data from individuals equipped with GPS collars to estimate annual home ranges, home range overlap, and average minimum distances between parties. We examined whether food availability and predator presence levels affected the cohesion between parties in 2022.

Results: We found substantial overlap in home range and core area among parties (33 to 100%). Food availability or predator presence did not affect the distance to the closest neighbouring party; the average minimum distance between parties was less than 100 m.

Conclusions: Our results suggest a low level of feeding competition between our study parties. Whether this is a general feature of Guinea baboons or particular to the situation in the Niokolo-Koba National Park remains to be investigated.