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Digesta Passage Time, Digestibility, and Total Gut Fill in Captive Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata): Effects Food Type and Food Intake Level

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Abstract

Digestion is an important process in understanding the feeding ecology of animals. We examined digesta passage time, digestibility, and total gut fill in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata; n = 4) under 4 dietary conditions representing the seasonal and regional variations in the diets of wild populations to determine the effects of food type and food intake on these digestive features. Food type is associated with mean retention time (MRT), digestibility, and total gut fill. Dry matter intake (DMI) of food correlates positively with total gut fill but not with MRT or digestibility. Conversely, indigestible DMI affected MRT negatively. Thus, when Japanese macaques consume high-fiber foods, MRT becomes shorter and digestibility is lower than when eating low-fiber foods. Moreover, macaques experience increases in total gut fill when they consume high-fiber diets or a large amount of food. Japanese macaques may excrete difficult-to-digest food components quickly; they nevertheless buffer an increase in food intake by an increase in gut fill. Our study offers new insights into the relationship between feeding ecology and nutritional physiology in primates by simultaneously examining the effects of food type and intake level on MRT and digestibility.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Yoshiaki Kamanaka and Mayumi Morimoto of the Center for Human Evolution Modeling Research, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University (KUPRI), and Kiyonori Kumazaki and Naoko Suda of the Research Resource Station, KUPRI for their great support in conducting the experiments. We also thank members of the Laboratory of Animal Nutrition, Okayama University, for their help in marker analysis. We thank Dr. Marcus Clauss, an anonymous reviewer, and the editor of this journal as well as the staff of KUPRI for helpful comments and advice on this study. Our study complied with the guidelines in KUPRI ’s Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Primates. This research was approved by the ethics committee of KUPRI and financially supported in part by the Global Center of Excellence Program Formation of a Strategic Base for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Research: from Genome to Ecosystem of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Akiko Sawada & Goro Hanya

  2. Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Okayama University, Tsushima-naka, Kita-ku, Okayama, 700-8530, Japan

    Ei Sakaguchi

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  1. Akiko Sawada
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  2. Ei Sakaguchi
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  3. Goro Hanya
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Correspondence to Akiko Sawada.

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Sawada, A., Sakaguchi, E. & Hanya, G. Digesta Passage Time, Digestibility, and Total Gut Fill in Captive Japanese Macaques (Macaca fuscata): Effects Food Type and Food Intake Level. Int J Primatol 32, 390–405 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-010-9476-5

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