1. Involving communities in sustainable wildlife management in tropical forests can ensure food security and livelihoods of millions of forest dwellers that depend on wild meat, but also safeguard hunted species. Mathematical models have been developed to assess hunting sustainability; but these require empirical information on reproductive parameters of the prey species, often challenging to obtain. 2. Here, we suggest that if local people can accurately identify the reproductive status of hunted animals in the field, these data could fill the existing knowledge gap regarding species’ life-history traits and enable better assessments of hunting impacts. 3. We first tested whether local people in 15 rural communities in three Amazonian sites could accurately diagnose, before and after training, the pregnancy status of hunted pacas (Cuniculus paca), which we use as our model. We then applied the results from these tests to correct reproductive status data of hunted specimens, voluntarily collected over 17 years (2002-2018) as part of a citizen science project in one of our study sites. We ran generalized additive models to contrast these corrected reproductive rates with those obtained from the direct analysis of genitalia by researchers, and with indices describing game extraction levels (catch-per-unit-effort, CPUE, and age structure of hunted individuals). 4. Before training, interviewees correctly diagnosed pregnancy in 72.5% of tests, but after training, interviewees accurately diagnosed pregnancy in 88.2% of tests, with high improvements especially for earlier pregnancy stages. Monthly pregnancy rates determined by hunters and by researchers were similar. Reported annual pregnancy Page 3 of 45 Confidential Review copy Journal of Applied Ecology 4 rates were negatively correlated with CPUE, and positively correlated with the percentage of immatures in the hunted population, in accordance to an expected densitydependent response to variations in hunting levels. 5. We showed that the voluntary diagnosis of game species’ reproductive status by local people is a feasible method to obtain accurate life-history parameters for hunted tropical species, and to assess hunting effects on game populations. Given that almost half of the protected areas in the world are co-managed by local people, our results confirm the potential of integrating local communities in citizen science initiatives to ensure faster, low-cost, and more accurate data collection for wildlife management.

中文翻译：

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让当地社区参与有效的公民科学：确定猎物物种的繁殖状态以评估热带森林中的狩猎效果

1. 让社区参与热带森林的可持续野生动物管理可以确保数百万依赖野生肉类的森林居民的粮食安全和生计，同时也可以保护被猎杀的物种。已经开发了数学模型来评估狩猎的可持续性；但这些需要关于猎物物种繁殖参数的经验信息，通常很难获得。2. 在这里，我们建议，如果当地人能够准确地识别野外被猎杀动物的繁殖状态，这些数据可以填补有关物种生活史特征的现有知识空白，并能够更好地评估狩猎影响。3. 我们首先测试了亚马逊三个站点的 15 个农村社区的当地人是否可以在训练前后准确诊断被猎杀的美洲豹（Cuniculus paca）的怀孕状况，我们使用它作为我们的模型。然后，我们将这些测试的结果应用于更正被狩猎标本的生殖状态数据，这些数据是在我们的一个研究地点作为公民科学项目的一部分自愿收集的超过 17 年（2002-2018 年）。我们运行了广义的加性模型，将这些校正的繁殖率与研究人员直接分析生殖器获得的繁殖率进行对比，并与描述游戏提取水平的指数（每单位努力的捕获量、CPUE 和被猎杀个体的年龄结构）进行对比。4. 培训前，受访者在 72.5% 的测试中正确诊断怀孕，但在培训后，受访者在 88.2% 的测试中准确诊断怀孕，尤其是在早期妊娠阶段有很大提高。猎人和研究人员确定的每月怀孕率相似。报告的年度怀孕 第 3 页，共 45 页 机密评论副本 应用生态学杂志 4 比率与 CPUE 呈负相关，与被猎杀种群中未成熟的百分比呈正相关，根据对狩猎水平变化的预期密度依赖性反应。5. 我们表明，当地人自愿诊断猎物物种的繁殖状况是获得准确的热带物种生活史参数和评估狩猎对猎物种群影响的可行方法。鉴于世界上近一半的保护区由当地人共同管理，我们的结果证实了将当地社区纳入公民科学计划的潜力，以确保更快、低成本和更准确的野生动物管理数据收集。