Do protected areas in Panama support intact assemblages of ungulates?

Ungulates play an essential role in terrestrial ecosystems, but suffer from hunting and habitat degradation which often results in their<br/>decline. Panama harbors five species of ungulate and is an important portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, but its forest<br/>habitat and its fauna are currently threatened. Protected areas have been designated to preserve the biodiversity, but studies evaluating<br/>their effectiveness in maintaining ungulates are lacking in Panama. In this study we used camera-trapping surveys to determine the<br/>occurrence and abundance of the ungulate species in 13 protected areas across Panama. There were large differences in the ungulate<br/>communities among the sites we surveyed. Some sites were impoverished with just one ungulate species recorded while just a single<br/>site harbored all five species. The white-lipped peccary was the rarest species and the collared peccaries the most common, captured<br/>in all the sites. Moreover, we found large variation in ungulate abundance across the sites. Our results indicate that few protected areas<br/>in Panama effectively maintain the entire assemblage of ungulate species