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Comparison of energy balance between two different-sized groups of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata yakui)

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Abstract

Quantifying the energy balance is essential for testing socio-ecological models. To reveal costs and benefits of group living in Japanese macaques from the perspective of feeding competition, Kurihara and Hanya (Am J Primatol 77:986–1000, 2015) previously compared feeding behavior between two different-sized groups of macaques (larger group 30–35 individuals; smaller group 13–15 individuals) in the coastal forest of Yakushima, Japan. The results suggested that the larger group exhibited greater feeding effort because of intragroup scramble competition and that the smaller group suffered from higher travel costs, possibly owing to intergroup contest competition. However, it remained unclear whether the behavioral differences affected their energy budgets. The present study examined energetic consequences of the different feeding behaviors in the two groups. Using behavioral data from 10 to 13 adult females and nutritional composition of food items, we compared ingestion rates, energetic/nutritional content of diet, and energy budgets between the two groups. Ingestion rates and energetic/nutritional content of diet did not differ between the two groups. Despite the higher feeding effort of the larger group, energy intake did not differ between the two groups. Energy expenditure did not differ between the two groups because higher travel costs were negated by lower feeding effort in the smaller group. Consequently, the energy balance did not differ between the two groups. We demonstrated that the behavioral measures of feeding competition were not translated into their energetic condition; moreover, our findings re-emphasize the importance of quantifying behavioral and fitness measures for interpreting variation in feeding behavior properly.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Yakushima Forest Ecosystem Conservation Center and Kagoshima Prefectural Government for their permission to conduct behavioral data collection in Yakushima. We would like to express our gratitude to Drs. Hideki Sugiura and Mariko Suzuki for his warm support in the field, Mr. Toshihiro Saito for his help in identifying plant species, Dr. Akiko Sawada and Ms. Yuki Shima for helping with food sample collection, and Dr. Shota Mochizuki for helping with the GPS data analysis. We are grateful to the members of the Department of Ecology and Social Behavior in the Primate Research Institute in Kyoto University for giving us constructive comments and suggestions. This study was supported financially by the Cooperation Research Program of the Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Daiko Foundation Scholarship, and Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellow (No. 16J01208) to YK and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (No. 23370099 to Dr. Naofumi Nakagawa, the Laboratory of Human Evolution Studies, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University).

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  1. Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kanrin 41-2, Inuyama, Aichi, 484-8506, Japan

    Yosuke Kurihara & Goro Hanya

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  1. Yosuke Kurihara
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Correspondence to Yosuke Kurihara.

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Kurihara, Y., Hanya, G. Comparison of energy balance between two different-sized groups of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata yakui). Primates 58, 413–422 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10329-017-0607-x

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