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 theirdecline. Panama harbors five species of ungulate and is an important portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, but its foresthabitat and its fauna are currently threatened. Protected areas have been designated to preserve the biodiversity, but studies evaluatingtheir effectiveness in maintaining ungulates are lacking in Panama. In this study we used camera-trapping surveys to determine theoccurrence and abundance of the ungulate species in 13 protected areas across Panama. There were large differences in the ungulatecommunities among the sites we surveyed. Some sites were impoverished with just one ungulate species recorded while just a singlesite harbored all five species. The white-lipped peccary was the rarest species and the collared peccaries the most common, capturedin all the sites. Moreover, we found large variation in ungulate abundance across the sites. Our results indicate that few protected areasin Panama effectively maintain the entire assemblage of ungulate species