New camera technology in Congo’s Lomami National Park has revealed how monkeys, pangolins and civets divide their lives between the ground, understory and tree canopy.
Serval-chan (Reptile Lus Serval), a medium-sized wild cat native to Africa. Image credit: Florida Atlantic University.
Lomami National Park It is located in the Tsopō and Maniema provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Established in 2016, the national park covers an area of 8,874 square kilometers and consists of evergreen rainforest, semi-evergreen rainforest, wetland forest, and savanna.
The area is home to a rich diversity of flora and fauna, including rare mammals of high conservation interest such as bonobos, okapis, dryas monkeys, and lesulas.
Researchers at Florida Atlantic University used infrared cameras from the forest floor to the canopy to create a 3D view of the park’s biodiversity.
In one study, mammal journalthey developed This method examines species richness, community composition, and vertical habitat use across three study areas and their buffer zones within the park.
They identified 47 mammal species representing primates, carnivores, rodents, artiodactyla (artiodactyla mammals like the red river hog), and one of the world’s most trafficked mammals, the pangolin.
Eight species were detected outside their currently recorded geographic ranges, providing records that may be useful for future range assessments.
The cameras revealed a strikingly stratified community, with 32 species detected on the ground, 23 in the understory, and 22 in the canopy.
“The camera essentially provided us with a way to turn a point in the forest into a vertical viewing column,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Arenpijevic, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University.
In another study published in the journal ecologyscientists used Data from the 25 most frequently detected mammal species to develop multispecies, multiscale occupancy models.
Animals included bonobos, red-tailed macaques, African civets, red river hogs, long-tailed mongooses, and naval squirrels.
Combining observations from the ground, understory, and canopy revealed patterns that would have been missed at a single level.
Most notably, mammal occupancy increased with increasing elevation. This is a surprising result given that there is little elevation gain within the wetland Central Congo Basin.
Even with such subtle topographic changes, a complete camera column approach revealed important relationships that would have been missed from the forest floor alone.
“Most biodiversity studies essentially flatten forests into two-dimensional worlds,” says lead author Dr. Daniel Gorczynski, also of Florida Atlantic University.
“What was unique was that we were able to look at the same forest from ground level to canopy and ask how those additional aspects change what we think we know about the mammal community as a whole.”
“We found that it has the potential to fundamentally change the ecological story.”
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Daniel Arenpijevic others. 2026. Multilayered “camera columns”: an effective approach for characterizing non-spontaneous mammal communities in tropical forests. mammal journal 107 (4): 794-809;doi: 10.1093/jmammal/gyag047
Daniel Gorchinski others. 2026. Ground-to-canopy monitoring reveals hidden ecological patterns of Congo Basin mammals. ecology 107 (7): e70449;doi: 10.1002/ecy.70449
Source: www.sci.news
