Habitat selection
The most abundant habitat types within our study
area were cocoa, pastures and monocultures, while
tropical forest and human development were the least
abundant (Table 2). Median home range size was 7.5 ha
(range = 0.6–101.1 ha) and 5.3 ha (range = 0.1–53.3
ha) for the two- and the three-toed sloth, respectively.
Both species of sloth exhibited second-order habitat
selection for tropical forests and avoided monocultures
and human development (Figure 3a). However, the twotoed
sloth also selected pastures, while the three-toed
sloth avoided this habitat type. When we excluded rarely
used monocultures and human development from our
analyses, the two-toed sloth selected for tropical forest but
avoided cocoa; the three-toed sloth selected for tropical
forest, and avoided both cocoa and pastures (Figure 3b).
Within home ranges (i.e. third-order habitat selection)
both the two- and the three-toed sloth selected for tropical
forest (Figure 3c), while the three-toed sloth avoided
cocoa and strongly avoided pastures (Figure 3c).