The GRASP secretariat is pleased to share that the paper “Higher Maximum Temperature Increases the Frequency of Water Drinking in Mountain Gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei)” has been published today in Frontiers in Conservation Science, with GRASP programme manager Dr Johannes Refisch as co-author. Two populations of mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, and Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda, were studied between July 2010 and October 2019 to monitor water drinking habits, as well as recording temperature and rainfall data to assess what impacts these climatic variables had on the behaviour of the gorillas.
The research, lead by Dr Edward Wright of the Max Planck Institute, highlights that even for rainforest mammals which gain most of their water requirements from food, access to free-standing water may be important because it likely facilitates evaporative cooling in response to thermoregulatory stress. These results have important implications for the conservation and behaviour of mountain gorillas in the face of continued increases in temperature and frequency of extreme weather events associated with climate change. A higher frequency in water drinking may lead to more parasite and human disease exposure. Moreover, because mountain gorillas are a small, isolated species with a limited habitat range, water availability is not always guaranteed in the home range of each group. A full press release has been shared on Frontiers in Conservation Science’s website and can be found here.
The research was conducted as part of our “Vanishing Treasures: Protecting endangered mountain species” project, funded by the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The results of the study will be fed into a full vulnerability assessment of mountain gorillas to climate change which will assist the VT project and will also inform the climate change component of an upcoming IUCN mountain gorilla conservation action plan.
