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Do Seasonal Frugivory and Cognition Shape Foraging Movements in Wild Western Gorillas?

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Movement Ecology of Afrotropical Forest Mammals

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Abstract

Tropical forests show high spatiotemporal seasonal variation in food availability, especially for fruits. To forage efficiently, frugivorous primates are expected to have higher spatiotemporal knowledge of food availability than folivorous primates. Here, we compiled published and new evidence to shed light on the foraging strategies and the underpinning cognition in the seasonally frugivorous western gorilla (G. gorilla) in response to seasonal changes in resources (high- and low-fruit seasons). Specifically, we assessed how western gorillas decide where to feed (movement heuristic and spatial knowledge), how to move (e.g., movement speed and straightness), and when to go (temporal knowledge) and come back to feeding sites (recursion pattern) when feeding mostly on fruits or leaves. Based on GPS tracks continuously recorded on three habituated groups in Central African Republic (May 2016 to November 2017), we found that western gorillas rely on spatiotemporal knowledge to decide where to go and when in both dietary seasons. Space-use patterns (daily path length and weekly range) were larger during the high-fruit season because of changes in food spatial distribution. However, the foraging strategies barely changed with seasons in terms of speed, straightness, and recursion patterns. Our results highlight how spatiotemporal cognition may buffer the effects of changes in food availability in seasonal frugivorous species. Given their role in seed dispersal, characterizing the cognition underlying tropical frugivore movements may provide insights into understanding large-scale ecological processes underpinning tropical forest regeneration and dynamics.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mario Melletti, Rafael Reyna-Hurtado, and Colin Chapman for inviting us to contribute to this chapter. We thank the two reviewers, Kathy Slater and Sophie Calmé, for constructive comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. We are grateful to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of CAR for the permission to conduct this research. We deeply thank the Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas and WWF CAR for allowing us to carry out fieldwork at their sites. Special thanks go to the Bai-Hokou and Mongambe staff for assistance in the field, especially the local Ba’Aka trackers, for their exceptional tracking skills and incredible forest knowledge. We are greatly thankful to Action Transversal du Muséum and the Department of Human and Environment for the Project Federateur of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN, Paris) for their financial support for this study. We also deeply thank the UMR 7206 and the MNHN for the institutional and the additional financial support. BR was funded by a PhD grant from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research to the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, CNRS et Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France

    Benjamin Robira & Simon Benhamou

  2. Current affiliation for Benjamin Robira: Department of Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology, Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, San Michele all’Adige, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy

    Benjamin Robira

  3. Eco-anthropologie, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l’Homme, Paris, France

    Benjamin Robira & Shelly Masi

  4. Dzanga-Sangha Protected Areas, Central African Republic, Current affiliation for Terence Fuh: World Wide Fund for Nature – Germany, Berlin, Germany

    Terence Neba Fuh

Authors
  1. Benjamin Robira
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  2. Simon Benhamou
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  3. Terence Neba Fuh
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  4. Shelly Masi
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Benjamin Robira or Shelly Masi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biodiversity Conservation, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Campeche, Campeche, Mexico

    Rafael Reyna-Hurtado

  2. Biology Department, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, BC, Canada

    Colin A. Chapman

  3. Wild Pig Specialist Group, IUCN SSC, African Buffalo Initiative Group IUCN, ASG, Rome, Italy

    Mario Melletti

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Robira, B., Benhamou, S., Fuh, T.N., Masi, S. (2023). Do Seasonal Frugivory and Cognition Shape Foraging Movements in Wild Western Gorillas?. In: Reyna-Hurtado, R., Chapman, C.A., Melletti, M. (eds) Movement Ecology of Afrotropical Forest Mammals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27030-7_9

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