Presenter(s): Erick Wonderly
Faculty Mentor(s): Frances White & Colin Brand
Poster 50
Session: Sciences
One of the central goals of ecology is to understand niche differentiation: how different species use the same environment in different enough ways so as to coexist. Typically, this is tested by examining dietary overlap between species. The Lemuriformes, lemurs and their relatives, provide an interesting test of niche differentiation given the antiquity of this superfamily and subsequent adaptation to various unoccupied niches. In this study we first tested for dietary overlap in feeding ecology among three lemur species: Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta), Verreaux’s sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi), and Brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus rufus), at Berenty Nature Reserve, Madagascar. We also considered the degree to which species can monopolize a food source from other species. We analyzed 1,988.16 hours of feeding and social behavior data collected by Alison Jolly between 1988-89 and 1992-93. We found consistent, substantial overlap in the diets of all three lemur species across all four study periods. The majority of aggressive intergroup encounters were within species. Between species encounters rarely resulted in aggression and exclusion from a feeding patch. Collectively, these results suggest greater dietary overlap than previously considered in these taxa and that niche separation beyond lemurs occurs beyond feeding contexts.