Arboreal monkeys facilitate foraging of terrestrial frugivores

Abstract

Terrestrial animals feed on fruit dropped by arboreal frugivores in tropical forests around the world, but it remains unknown whether the resulting spatial associations of these animals are coincidental or intentionally maintained. On Barro Colorado Island, Panama, we used a combination of acoustic playback experiments, remote camera monitoring, and GPS tracking to quantify the frequency of such interactions, determine who initiates and maintains spatial associations, and test whether terrestrial animals adopt a strategy of acoustic eavesdropping to locate fruit patches created by foraging primates. Indeed, 90% of fruits collected in fruit fall traps had tooth marks of arboreal frugivores, and terrestrial frugivores visited fruit trees sooner following visits by GPS-collared monkeys. While our play back experiments were insufficient to support the hypothesis that terrestrial frugivores use auditory cues to locate food dropped by arboreal primates, analyses of movement paths of capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus), spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi), and coatis (Nasua narica) reveal that observed patterns of interspecific attraction are not merely a byproduct of mutual attraction to shared resources. Coatis were significantly more likely to initiate close encounters with arboreal primates than vice versa and maintained these associations by spending significantly longer periods at fruiting trees when collared primates were present. Our results demonstrate that terrestrial frugivores are attracted to arboreal primates, likely because they increase local resource availability.

Primate sympatry shapes the evolution of their brain architecture

“…In addition, dietary overlap and food competition might not only happen between frugivorous primates but between any frugivores in the same area. In fact, it is very likely that any hypotheses on cognition evolution, generally discussed within species, could be broadened to a between-species context: foraging facilitation between species does exist (Olupot, Waser, and Chapman 1998;Havmøller et al 2021), and so do polyspecific social associations (Porter 2001), as well as inter-species territory and resource defence (Drury, Cowen, and Grether 2020;Losin et al 2016) or imitation and copying (Pepperberg 2002;Persson, Sauciuc, and Madsen 2018). Similarly, prey-predator races could shape selection on cognitive abilities (Shultz and Dunbar 2006).…”

Primate sympatry shapes the evolution of their brain architecture

“…In addition, dietary overlap and food competition might not only happen between frugivorous primates, but between any frugivores in the same area. In fact, it is very likely that any hypotheses on cognition evolution, generally discussed within species, could be broadened to a between-species context: foraging facilitation between species does exist (Olupot, Waser, and Chapman 1998; Havmøller et al 2021), and so do polyspecific social associations (Porter 2001), as well as inter-species territory and resource defence (Drury, Cowen, and Grether 2020; Losin et al 2016) or imitation and copying (Persson, Sauciuc, and Madsen 2018; Pepperberg 2002). Similarly, prey-predator races could shape selection on cognitive abilities (Shultz and Dunbar 2006).…”

Stochastic dynamics of social patch foraging decisions

“…Social foraging is crucial for animals as it is important for resource localization and collective search [46,[49][50][51][52][53][54]. While we considered cohesive group movement, other animals such as spider monkeys live in groups but do not maintain cohesion during daily foraging, instead leaving and re-joining groups as they forage (so-called fission-fusion group dynamics) [55,56]. An extension of our modeling approach could be used to represent fission-fusion group dynamics by considering agents that move between patches in a foraging landscape.…”