Do Fruit Nutrients Affect Subgrouping Patterns in Wild Spider Monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi)?

One of the main costs of group living is feeding competition. Fission–fusion dynamics are thought to be a strategy to avoid overt competition for food resources. We tested whether food abundance and quality affected such dynamics in a species characterized by a high degree of fission–fusion dynamics...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational journal of primatology Vol. 37; no. 6; pp. 738 - 751
Main Authors Busia, Laura, Schaffner, Colleen M., Rothman, Jessica M., Aureli, Filippo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.12.2016
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Animal behavior
Animal Ecology
Animal Genetics and Genomics
Anthropology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Evolutionary Biology
Food resources
Food supply
Fruits
Human Genetics
Life Sciences
Monkeys & apes
Nutrition
Nutritive value
Zoology
Feeding competition
Food abundance
Fission–fusion dynamics
Nutrient quality
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ISSN0164-0291
1573-8604
DOI10.1007/s10764-016-9935-8

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Summary:One of the main costs of group living is feeding competition. Fission–fusion dynamics are thought to be a strategy to avoid overt competition for food resources. We tested whether food abundance and quality affected such dynamics in a species characterized by a high degree of fission–fusion dynamics. We collected data on 22 adult and subadult spider monkeys ( Ateles geoffroyi ) living in a large community in the protected area of Otoch Ma’ax Yetel Kooh, Yucatan, Mexico. We recorded subgroup size and fission events as well as fruit abundance during 12 mo and conducted nutritional analyses on the fruit species that the study subjects consumed most. We found no effect of fruit abundance or nutritional quality of recently visited food patches on individual fission decisions, but the amount of protein in the food patches visited over the course of the day was a good predictor of subgroup size. While the absence of support for a relationship between fruit characteristics and fission decisions may be due to the short temporal scale of the analysis, our findings relating subgroup size to the amount of protein in the visited food patches over the course of the day may be explained by individual spider monkeys attempting to obtain sufficient protein intake from their fruit-based diet.
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ISSN:0164-0291
1573-8604
DOI:10.1007/s10764-016-9935-8