NDLI: Dietary Flexibility and Feeding Strategies of Eulemur: A Comparison with Propithecus

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Sato, Hiroki Santini, Luca Patel, Erik R. Campera, Marco Yamashita, Nayuta Colquhoun, Ian C. Donati, Giuseppe
Copyright Year	2015
Abstract	Despite the great variety of habitats in Madagascar, Eulemur has successfully populated most forested habitats on the island. Although the high dietary flexibility of Eulemur is often credited as one of the drivers of its evolutionary success, other behavioral evidence suggests a limited capacity for dietary switching. To shed light on the feeding strategies of Eulemur, we compared the dietary flexibility between populations of this genus with that of another widespread lemur taxon, Propithecus. We hypothesized that Eulemur would show greater dietary flexibility than Propithecus, which has a digestive system specialized for folivory, and that Eulemur living in dry forests would switch its diet from fruit to other food seasonally. To examine these hypotheses, we performed a phylogenetic least-squares analysis on 10 populations of Eulemur and 7 of Propithecus to assess the contribution of environmental variables and body mass on their dietary flexibility while controlling for phylogenetic relatedness. Eulemur relied heavily on fruit and did not show large variations in primary food over the year. Propithecus consumed leaves and fruits equally and exhibited considerable flexibility across seasons. Therefore, in contrast to our predictions, the anatomical specialization for fiber digestion heightens dietary flexibility in Propithecus. At the intrageneric level, we found similar ecogeographic variation; populations of both genera with heavier body mass consumed more fruit. As we predicted, Eulemur in drier habitats switched the diet from fruit to alternative food more frequently. To compensate for low dietary flexibility, Eulemur mostly adopts a power-feeding strategy by which it increases energy expenditure to acquire patchily distributed fruit resources.
Starting Page	109
Ending Page	129
Page Count	21
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01640291
Journal	International Journal of Primatology
Volume Number	37
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	15738604
Language	English
Publisher	Springer US
Publisher Date	2015-12-10
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Anatomical adaptation Behavioral flexibility Diet Feeding strategies Sifakas True lemurs Evolutionary Biology Zoology Animal Genetics and Genomics Anthropology Animal Ecology Human Genetics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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