DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sf7m0cg99
title: Data from: Species identity and cave-dwelling tree hyraxes of the Kenyan coast

description: The eastern tree hyrax is thought to be a solitarily living arboreal
 species of the forests of East Africa. However, on the coast of Kenya,
 indigenous forests have been almost entirely cleared, and some of the last
 tree hyrax populations live in limestone rocky formations and caves.
 Interestingly, they seem to be living in social groups. Here, we describe
 and document photographically these unique tree hyrax populations. We also
 describe their acoustical communication and their calling activity in
 three different habitats. Based on these animals’ physical appearance and
 acoustic analyses of their calls, they represent the species eastern tree
 hyrax, Dendrohyrax validus. Due to immence pressure from humans, the
 future of these small and isolated, cave-living tree hyrax populations
 does not seem bright.
description: <strong>Study
 sites</strong> We visited three tree hyrax habitats on the
 Kenya coast in Jan 26–Feb 1, 2022. The first study site, the Shimba Hills Natural Reserve, 4.214° S,
 39.451° E, has a total area of 192.5 km. The reserve supports forests (Figure 2a) and grassland areas that are kept open by
 periodic
 burning. The local tree hyraxes live in trees. The second site, Vipingo, is on private land (coordinates not published).
 It represents a 25-ha patch of old indigenous forest with large baobab
 trees (Figure
 2b), surrounded by
 agricultural lands and villages. The site also has three large sacred limestone caves with bat colonies. The local tree hyraxes live in caves and
 trees. The third site,
 Chasimba, 3.739° S, 39.693° E, represents a small (2 ha) rock outcrop with
 sacred caves and small indigenous trees (Figure 2c), surrounded by
 agricultural fields and banana groves. The local tree hyraxes live in
 rocky formations higher up. Unfortunately, the site has already lost most
 of its tree cover and is in imminent threat of being turned into a
 limestone quarry, which would undoubtedly exterminate the tree hyrax
 population, as there are no other suitable habitats
 nearby. We used a thermal imaging camera, Pulsar Helion
 2 XP50 (Yukon Advanced
 Optics Worldwide, Vilnius, Lithuania) and Fenix TK25 RED (Fenix Lighting, Littleton,
 CO, USA) flashlights. For recordings, we used AudioMoth automatic
 recorders (v1.1.0 Open Acoustics Devices, Southampton, UK) and Song Meter4
 (Wildlife Acoustics, Maynard USA).
 Spectrograms and call analyses
 were done with Raven Pro 1.6. Different call types were identified, and
 clear recordings with no background noise were isolated. Tree hyrax
 calling activity for each hour was calculated by using band-limited energy
 detection function. A band-limited interactive detector was used with the
 following settings: min frequency 1000 Hz, max frequency 4500 Hz, min
 duration 0,01 s, max duration 2 s, min separation 0.23 s. Signal-to-noise
 ratio 70 %, SNR threshold above 10. False positive calls, (mostly
 short-eared greater galago <em>Otolemur</em>
 <em>garnettii</em> calls), were removed from the calculated
 calls by visually inspecting the calls.
 We compared our photographic
 and video material of living tree hyraxes with photographs of tree hyrax
 skins that we have studied in the collections of the Natural History
 Museums in Nairobi, Kenya, and in the Swedish Museum of Natural History in
 Stockholm, Sweden. This allowed us to compare the physical appearance of
 the Kenya coast tree hyraxes with representatives of other tree hyrax
 populations and species. Time in the file:
 a
 18-19 b 19-20
 c
 20-21 d 21-22
 e
 22-23 f 23-24
 g 0-1
 h 1-2
 i 2-3
 j 3-4
 k 4-5
 l 5-6
 m 6-7
description: This is a simple text file (txt), that can be opened on all
 computers.