Camera Traps Reveal How Congo’s Mammals Use the Forest From Ground to Canopy

Innovative camera technology in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Lomami National Park has revealed how monkeys, pangolins, civets and other mammals divide their habitat between the forest floor, understory and tree canopy.

Lomami National Park is located in the Tshopo and Maniema provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Established in 2016, the park covers approximately 8,874 square kilometers and includes evergreen rainforest, semi-evergreen rainforest, wetland forest and savanna habitats.

Lomami National Park supports remarkable biodiversity, including rare and threatened mammals such as bonobos, okapis, Dryas monkeys and lesulas.

Researchers from Florida Atlantic University used infrared camera traps positioned from the forest floor to the canopy to create a three-dimensional picture of mammal diversity in the park.

In one study published in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers developed a camera-column approach to examine species richness, community composition and vertical habitat use across three study areas and their buffer zones.

The team identified 47 mammal species, including primates, carnivores, rodents, artiodactyls such as red river hogs and pangolins, one of the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal groups.

Eight species were detected beyond their currently documented geographic ranges. These observations could help scientists update future assessments of mammal distributions.

The camera traps also revealed a strongly stratified mammal community. Researchers recorded 32 species on the ground, 23 in the understory and 22 in the forest canopy.

“The camera essentially provided us with a way to turn a point in the forest into a vertical viewing column,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Arenpijevic of Florida Atlantic University.

In a second study published in the journal Ecology, scientists used data from the 25 most frequently detected mammal species to develop a multispecies, multiscale occupancy model.

The analysis included bonobos, red-tailed macaques, African civets, red river hogs, long-tailed mongooses and squirrels.

By combining observations from the ground, understory and canopy, the researchers identified ecological patterns that would have been missed by monitoring only one level of the forest.

One of the most notable findings was that mammal occupancy increased with elevation. This result was unexpected because the wetland forests of the central Congo Basin have relatively little overall elevation change.

Even subtle differences in elevation were linked to mammal distribution. The complete ground-to-canopy camera approach revealed relationships that would not have been detected through forest-floor surveys alone.

“Most biodiversity studies essentially flatten forests into two-dimensional worlds,” said lead author Dr. Daniel Gorczynski, also of Florida Atlantic University.

“What was unique was that we were able to look at the same forest from ground level to canopy and ask how those additional aspects change what we think we know about the mammal community as a whole.”

“We found that it has the potential to fundamentally change the ecological story.”

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Daniel Arenpijevic et al. 2026. Multilayered “camera columns”: An effective approach for characterizing nonvolant mammal communities in tropical forests. Journal of Mammalogy 107 (4): 794–809. doi: 10.1093/jmammal/gyag047

Daniel Gorczynski et al. 2026. Ground-to-canopy monitoring reveals hidden ecological patterns of Congo Basin mammals. Ecology 107 (7): e70449. doi: 10.1002/ecy.70449