Camera Trapping Reveals High Mammal Diversity Within Hong Kong’s Fung Shui Woodlands and High Usage of Tree Hollows by Small-Bodied Terrestrial Mammals

Abstract

Background: The increasing pressures of urbanization and land-use change highlight the need to evaluate the conservation potential of natural habitat fragments within anthropogenically altered environments. Hong Kong has an intense history of human occupation and subsequent landscape modification, yet culturally significant Fung Shui woodlands have been preserved, with some estimated to date back 400 years. Methods: Here, we adopted a camera trap placement strategy targeting tree hollows, a microhabitat typically associated with mature forests. We assessed the hypothesised value of this resource across 13 Fung Shui woodlands, while providing insight into the ability of these forest patches to support mammalian diversity. Results/Conclusions: We found that these woodlands support a large proportion of the territory’s non-flying mammal community (12 species; 40%). This high diversity relative to surveyed habitat patch size likely reflects an abundance of habitat generalists found territory-wide, rather than a remnant community of species reliant on mature forest. We also documented hollow-use by murids, soricids, Pallas’s squirrel and East Asian porcupine. A high percentage of total detections of murid rodents (53%) and Pallas’s squirrel (46%) were recorded as hollow-use events (either entering, exiting or within a hollow), suggesting that tree hollows play a role in the ecology of Hong Kong’s small mammal species. Implications: This study demonstrates that tree hollows in Fung Shui woodlands, and more broadly in Hong Kong, provide supplementary microhabitats for a range of mammals, highlighting the conservation significance of this resource for Hong Kong fauna. Despite the relatively small size of Fung Shui woodlands in Hong Kong, our study underscores the need for their better protection and for further monitoring efforts of large trees and their habitat features across the territory, while providing wider insights on the persistence of biodiversity within habitat fragments in altered mosaic landscapes.