%0 Journal Article
%T Activity Budgets of Impala (Aepyceros melampus) in Closed Environments: The Mukuvisi Woodland Experience, Zimbabwe
%A Muposhi Victor Kurauwone
%A Muvengwi Justice
%A Utete Beven
%A Kupika Olga
%A Chiutsi Simon
%A Tarakini Tawanda
%J International Journal of Biodiversity
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/270454
%X Activity pattern plasticity in ungulates serves as an evolutionary adaptation to optimize fitness in inconsistent environments. Given that time is a limited and valuable resource for foraging wildlife species, provisioning and attraction may affect the activity pattern plasticity and reduce complexities of time partitioning for different activities by impala in closed environments. We assessed activity budgets of free-ranging impala social groups in a closed environment. Social group type had an influence on the activity budgets of impala except for foraging and moving activity states. Both the harem and bachelor groups spent more than 30% of their daily time foraging. Bachelor groups spent more time exhibiting vigilance tendencies than the harem groups. Season influenced the activity budgets of social groups other than vigilance and foraging activity states. Foraging time was highly correlated with vigilance, resting, and grooming. We concluded that provisioning and attraction may have reduced the influence of seasonality on the proportion of time spent on different activity states by impala social groups. There is a need to establish long-term socioecological, physiological, and reproductive consequences of provisioning and habituation on impala under closed environments. 1. Introduction Impalas (Aepyceros melampus melampus, Lichtenstein, 1812) are regarded as the most common, widely distributed, and abundant medium-sized antelope species throughout southern and east Africa [1, 2]. Classified as intermediate feeders, impalas are adapted to browsing and grazing, thus making them successful inhabitants of the savanna ecosystems [3, 4]. Favoured for game farming as well as hunting, the subspecies has been widely introduced to privately owned land and game reserves in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia [1]. For that reason, impalas are extremely important to the game ranching and conservation sector of southern Africa. In natural ecosystems, time is a valuable limited resource for all animals, and its partitioning might be influenced by sociality and as such may constrain sociality of free-ranging individuals [5]. Nakayama et al. [6] assert that the allocation of time for multiple activities has significant effects on the survival of wildlife species. Consequently, individuals adapt to environmental changes, such as food availability and temperature, by adjusting the amount of time spent in different behavioural activities [7]. The seasonality of activity budgets might be highly flexible in response to seasonal fluctuations in food supply and
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijbd/2013/270454/