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- Title
Feeding Postures of Cao Vit Gibbons ( Nomascus nasutus) Living in a Low-Canopy Karst Forest.
- Authors
Fei, Hanlan; Ma, Changyong; Bartlett, Thad; Dai, Ran; Xiao, Wen; Fan, Pengfei
- Abstract
Food acquisition is an important factor in the evolution of primate postural behavior. Gibbons are well known for their ability to exploit terminal branches by means of below branch suspensory feeding, but few studies of gibbon positional behavior have been conducted since the seminal work of the 1970s and 1980s. We studied the feeding posture of three cao vit gibbon groups living in degraded karst forest in Bangliang Gibbon Nature Reserve between August 2008 and December 2009 to determine if body mass, age, and food type affect feeding posture. We found that cao vit gibbons spent most of their time feeding from branches (59.4 %) and twigs (33.2 %) in the middle canopy of the forest (5-10 m). They used suspensory hanging and sitting as their main feeding postures. Large-bodied gibbons spent more time on larger supports than smaller juveniles when feeding on nonfig fruit and leaves. In addition, gibbons of all age-sex classes adopted a suspensory posture more often when using smaller (twigs) or more flexible (lianas) supports. We found little evidence of age-sex differences in the frequency of suspensory feeding. The subtle differences we did detect suggest that intragroup feeding competition or ontogeny may confound the body size effects on feeding posture. Overall our findings conform to the view that within species positional behavior is largely constrained by musculoskeletal anatomy and not by habitat quality because cao vit gibbons showed a similar pattern of canopy and substrate use to gibbons occupying less disturbed forests.
- Subjects
POSTURE; NOMASCUS; GIBBONS; BODY mass index; PRIMATE behavior research; ANIMAL behavior
- Publication
International Journal of Primatology, 2015, Vol 36, Issue 5, p1036
- ISSN
0164-0291
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s10764-015-9871-z