How does a howler monkey Alouatta pigra choose what to eat and where to sleep during the day?

Résumé fourni par la source

Studies of primate behavior have focused on animals independently of their interactions with their environment, ignoring critically important interactions with plants other than feeding. Black howler monkeys Alouatta pigra spend up to 60 % of their diurnal time resting, but structure and mechanisms of monkey-plant interactions associated with resting still need to be better understood. In this study, we assessed how plant characteristics influence howler monkeys’ interactions with plants they use for feeding and diurnal resting over three seasons in southeast Mexico. Inter-individual preferences and plant feeding patterns were also examined, and we conducted phenological surveys to determine how availability influences feeding interactions. We found a high diversity of monkey-plant interactions, a nested network (when specialists can only interact with subset of the species generalists interact with) pattern invariant of seasonality, and a higher level of specialization for feeding networks compared to diurnal resting networks. We observed that monkeys preferred large trees for diurnal resting sites and repeatedly selected the same species, resulting in less specialization for resting than feeding. By using an interaction network approach, our study represents a valuable conservation tool for this endangered primate because they highlight the importance of identifying essential species for feeding and diurnal resting.

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