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Does Resource Availability Affect the Diet and Behavior of the Vulnerable Squirrel Monkey, Saimiri vanzolinii?

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Abstract

Seasonal changes in food availability influence the behavior and diet of primates, and an understanding of dietary changes is important for the development of informed conservation plans. Saimiri vanzolinii is a small-bodied, omnivorous squirrel monkey endemic to the floodplain forests in Central Amazonia. It has a restricted distribution of only ca. 870 km2 and is classified as Vulnerable. We examined seasonal variation in this species’ diet. We collected phenological (presence and absence of ripe fruits from 205 tree species) and dietary and behavioral data for unhabituated groups of S. vanzolinii on nine 2-km transects in the floodplain forests of Central Amazonia for 2 years, encompassing the high-water and low-water periods. Fruit availability was higher, and the monkeys traveled less and fed more during the high-water than the low-water period. There were no seasonal differences between the high-water and low-water periods in the time spent feeding on fruits, flowers, or arthropods. S. vanzolinii spent more time consuming fruit than arthropods in the high-water period, but this was not the case in the low-water period. These findings suggest that food selection changed between seasons, and S. vanzolinii focused more on fruit in the low-water period, when fruit was less available, than in the high-water period, when fruit was more available. These results support the predictions of the ecological constraints model.

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded and supported by the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development (IDSM-OS/MCTI). We are grateful to the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and to the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for the scholarship awarded to F. Paim (CAPES 99999.003567/2015-00). We also thank the Research Group on Ecology of Terrestrial Vertebrates for logistical support and our field assistants and local communities at the Mamirauá Reserve for their help with our research. We acknowledge the editors and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript, and thank J. Hawes for the final English revision. Writing and presentation were assisted by grants from the National Geographic Society and the National Science and Engineering Research Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Mamirauá, Tefé, Amazonas, 69553-225, Brazil

    Fernanda P. Paim & Helder L. de Queiroz

  2. Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, 31270-901, Brazil

    Fernanda P. Paim & Adriano P. Paglia

  3. McGill School of Environment and Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, H3A 2T7, Canada

    Colin A. Chapman

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  1. Fernanda P. Paim
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  2. Colin A. Chapman
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Correspondence to Fernanda P. Paim.

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Paim, F.P., Chapman, C.A., de Queiroz, H.L. et al. Does Resource Availability Affect the Diet and Behavior of the Vulnerable Squirrel Monkey, Saimiri vanzolinii?. Int J Primatol 38, 572–587 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-017-9968-7

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