TY - JOUR T1 - Late Quaternary habitat suitability models for chimpanzees (<em>Pan troglodytes</em>) since the Last Interglacial (120,000 BP) JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2020.05.15.066662 SP - 2020.05.15.066662 AU - Christopher D. Barratt AU - Jack D. Lester AU - Paolo Gratton AU - Renske E. Onstein AU - Ammie K. Kalan AU - Maureen S. McCarthy AU - Gaëlle Bocksberger AU - Lauren C. White AU - Linda Vigilant AU - Paula Dieguez AU - Barrie Abdulai AU - Thierry Aebischer AU - Anthony Agbor AU - Alfred Kwabena Assumang AU - Emma Bailey AU - Mattia Bessone AU - Bartelijntje Buys AU - Joana Silva Carvalho AU - Rebecca Chancellor AU - Heather Cohen AU - Emmanuel Danquah AU - Tobias Deschner AU - Zacharie Nzooh Dongmo AU - Osiris A. Doumbé AU - Jef Dupain AU - Chris S. Duvall AU - Manasseh Eno-Nku AU - Gilles Etoga AU - Anh Galat-Luong AU - Rosa Garriga AU - Sylvain Gatti AU - Andrea Ghiurghi AU - Annemarie Goedmakers AU - Anne-Céline Granjon AU - Dismas Hakizimana AU - Nadia Haydar AU - Josephine Head AU - Daniela Hedwig AU - Ilka Herbinger AU - Veerle Hermans AU - Sorrel Jones AU - Jessica Junker AU - Parag Kadam AU - Mohamed Kambi AU - Ivonne Kienast AU - Célestin Yao Kouakou AU - Kouamé Paul N’Goran AU - Kevin E. Langergraber AU - Juan Lapuente AU - Anne Laudisoit AU - Kevin C. Lee AU - Fiona Maisels AU - Deborah Moore AU - Bethan Morgan AU - David Morgan AU - Emily Neil AU - Sonia Nicholl AU - Louis Nkembi AU - Anne Ntongho AU - Christopher Orbell AU - Lucy Jayne Ormsby AU - Liliana Pacheco AU - Alex K. Piel AU - Lilian Pintea AU - Andrew J. Plumptre AU - Aaron Rundus AU - Crickette Sanz AU - Volker Sommer AU - Tenekwetche Sop AU - Fiona A. Stewart AU - Jacqueline Sunderland-Groves AU - Nikki Tagg AU - Angelique Todd AU - Els Ton AU - Joost van Schijndel AU - Hilde VanLeeuwe AU - Elleni Vendras AU - Adam Welsh AU - José Francisco Carminatti Wenceslau AU - Erin G. Wessling AU - Jacob Willie AU - Roman M. Wittig AU - Nakashima Yoshihiro AU - Yisa Ginath Yuh AU - Kyle Yurkiw AU - Christophe Boesch AU - Mimi Arandjelovic AU - Hjalmar Kühl Y1 - 2020/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/16/2020.05.15.066662.abstract N2 - Aim Paleoclimate reconstructions have enhanced our understanding of how past climates may have shaped present-day biodiversity. We hypothesize that habitat stability in historical Afrotropical refugia played a major role in the habitat suitability and persistence of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) during the late Quaternary. We aimed to build a dynamic model of changing habitat suitability for chimpanzees at fine spatio-temporal scales to provide a new resource for understanding their ecology, behaviour and evolution.Location Afrotropics.Taxon Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), including all four subspecies (P. t. verus, P. t. ellioti, P. t. troglodytes, P. t. schweinfurthii).Methods We used downscaled bioclimatic variables representing monthly temperature and precipitation estimates, historical human population density data and an extensive database of georeferenced presence points to infer chimpanzee habitat suitability at 62 paleoclimatic time periods across the Afrotropics based on ensemble species distribution models. We mapped habitat stability over time using an approach that accounts for dispersal between time periods, and compared our modelled stability estimates to existing knowledge of Afrotropical refugia. Our models cover a spatial resolution of 0.0467 degrees (approximately 5.19 km2 grid cells) and a temporal resolution of every 1,000–4,000 years dating back to the Last Interglacial (120,000 BP).Results Our results show high habitat stability concordant with known historical forest refugia across Africa, but suggest that their extents are underestimated for chimpanzees. We provide the first fine-grained dynamic map of historical chimpanzee habitat suitability since the Last Interglacial which is suspected to have influenced a number of ecological-evolutionary processes, such as the emergence of complex patterns of behavioural and genetic diversity.Main Conclusions We provide a novel resource that can be used to reveal spatio-temporally explicit insights into the role of refugia in determining chimpanzee behavioural, ecological and genetic diversity. This methodology can be applied to other taxonomic groups and geographic areas where sufficient data are available.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -