Ecological Dynamics of Neotropical Peccaries

Neotropical peccaries comprise three species that occupy diverse habitats across Central and South America: the collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari) and the Chacoan peccary (Catagonus wagneri). These ungulates form cohesive social groups that influence forest regeneration through seed predation and dispersal, while also shaping understorey structure by rooting behaviour. Population dynamics of peccaries are closely tied to resource availability, predation pressure and anthropogenic threats such as habitat fragmentation, hunting and agricultural expansion. White-lipped peccaries, in particular, exhibit cyclical population crashes and recolonisation events across vast tracts of rainforest, reflecting density-dependent mortality and source–sink interactions within large continuous forests. Collared peccaries display remarkable habitat plasticity, persisting in anthropogenic mosaics by adjusting foraging and movement patterns. The Chacoan peccary, once thought extinct, has a highly restricted range and is vulnerable to synergistic impacts of deforestation, overexploitation and climate shifts. Collectively, peccaries act as ecosystem engineers, modulating nutrient cycling and faunal community structure, and serve as indicators of forest integrity and connectivity.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

Ecological Dynamics of Neotropical Peccaries publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in ecological dynamics of neotropical peccaries across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Ecosystem engineer: A species that directly or indirectly modulates the availability of resources to other organisms by causing physical state changes in biotic or abiotic materials.

Species distribution model: A computational framework that relates species occurrence data to environmental variables to predict geographic patterns of habitat suitability.

Partitioning analysis: A statistical approach used to apportion the relative contributions of multiple drivers to observed changes in ecological metrics.

Density-dependent mortality: Increased death rates in a population that occur as a function of population density, often leading to cyclical fluctuations.

Resource selection function: A mathematical model describing the probability of habitat or resource use by animals as a function of environmental covariates.

References

1. Partitioning the effects of habitat loss, hunting and climate change on the endangered Chacoan peccary. Diversity and Distributions (2023).
2. Large-scale population disappearances and cycling in the white-lipped peccary, a tropical forest mammal. PLOS ONE (2022).
3. Ranging ecology and resource selection of white‐lipped peccaries (Tayassu pecari) in the world's largest tropical agricultural frontier. Ecology and Evolution (2023).