habitat_narrative
Terrestrial
Across the continent, Blue Duikers exist in a wide range of forested and wooded habitats, including primary and secondary forests, gallery forests, dry forest patches, coastal scrub farmland and regenerating forest (Hart & Kingdon 2013). Within the assessment region, they occur mainly within scarp and coastal forests, thickets or dense coastal bush (Skinner & Chimimba 2005), although they can occupy modified habitats (Y. Ehlers-Smith unpubl. data). They frequent forest glades and open areas but need dense underbrush to rest or take cover. They are selective foragers which mainly feed on fruit, dicots and a small percentage of monocots (Hanekom & Wilson 1991; Gagnon & Chew 2000). They are a diurnal species, commonly living in pairs, with small mean home ranges varying between 0.74 ha (Bowland and Perrin 1995) and 5.86 ha (Mockrin 2010). A large proportion of subadults disperse due to intra-specific social interactions (Bowland 1990; Lawes et al. 2000). Camera trapping has shown that in high-disturbance areas there has been a shift towards nocturnal foraging (Y. Ehlers-Smith unpubl. data). Substantial spatiotemporal variation in Blue Duiker population densities has been recorded in the Garden Route National Park, Western Cape, and subpopulation densities were found to be affected by features of forest structure, moist versus dry forest types and geological substrate (Seydack et al. 1998).
Ecosystem and cultural services: Frugivores are very important seed dispersers in forest ecosystems (Brodie et al. 2009; Abernethy et al. 2013) and, due to the presence of Blue Duiker in many of South Africaâs coastal and scarp forests, the ecosystem service they provide is crucial for ecosystem functioning. Blue Duikers also comprise a significant proportion of forest carnivore diets (Hanekom & Wilson 1991; Braczkowski et al. 2012) and are also an important source of bushmeat for many rural people in Africa (Abernethy et al. 2013; Lindsey et al. 2013). It is also suspected that Blue Duikers play a role in pruning tree seedlings, thus shaping forest succession.
