Are mammal communities occurring at a regional scale reliably represented in "hub" bushmeat markets? A case study with Bayelsa State (Niger Delta, Nigeria).

Monitoring of bushmeat markets has traditionally been seen as a source of faunistic and ecological data on mammal communities in West Africa. Nonetheless, it is largely unexplored whether datasets coming from monitoring of large "hub" markets in towns can reliably picture the mammal faunas and community compositions at the local level. Here, Swali market in Bayelsa State, Nigeria, that is one of the largest bushmeat markets in the Niger Delta, was monitored for six months in 2013-2014. Data from Swali market were compared with those collected during regular field surveys at five protected forests situated within 15 km radius from the market. A total of 21 mammal species was recorded at Swali versus 29 in the five protected forests. The trade was more intense by wet season. There was a statistically significant linear relationship between mean weight of the sold mammal and its price. A considerable portion of species that occur at the protected forests did not occur in the market samples, including the very rare species and the smallsized species. However, the abundance in the market of the common species was positively related to their apparent field abundance in the forest reserves. Therefore, it is concluded that large-sized bushmeat markets did not depict reliably the whole faunal composition and the community structure of mammals in West Africa, although these types of surveys are sufficient to characterize the abundance distribution of the common species at the regional scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]