Detection of insect prey by wild common marmosets: The effect of color vision

Abstract

Most species of New World primates have an unusual color vision pattern that can affect an individual's ability to detect food. Whereas males can only be dichromatic, females can be either dichromatic or trichromatic. Trichromats are expected to have an advantage in detecting conspicuous food whereas dichromats should be better at locating cryptic resources. Here we aimed to understand how color vision phenotype influences insect foraging by five groups of common marmosets living in a semiarid environment. We recorded insect predation events, noting morphotype and color of the captured insect, and the substrate from which it was captured. Color modeling suggested that, for all values of chromatic contrast resulting from comparing the measured insect–substrate pairs, trichromats outperformed dichromats. Females showed an overall higher insect capture rate than males. Females also showed a higher capture rate of conspicuous insects but there was no sex difference for the capture of cryptic insects. When we compared only dichromatic individuals there was no difference between sexes. These findings suggest that differences found in capture rate related not only to sex but also to visual polymorphism and that the latter is a crucial factor determining insect capture rate in common marmosets. Nevertheless, these results should be interpreted with caution because of the small number (three) of dichromat females and the unknown phenotype of the remaining females. Our results support the balancing selection hypothesis, suggesting that the advantage of one phenotype over the other may depend on environmental circumstances. This hypothesis has recently been considered as the most plausible for the maintenance of visual polymorphism in New World primates.

Temporal consistency and ecological validity of personality structure in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus): A unifying field and laboratory approach

“…During the data collection time, the mean temperatures ranged from 18.5°C to 35.7°C according to the Brazilian National Institute for Meteorology (INMET), Cabaceiras station. Most marmosets of the area were well habituated to the presence of humans from previous studies (e.g., Abreu et al, 2016, 2019; Caselli et al, 2018; De la Fuente et al 2014, 2019). In particular, three groups (Casa, Coqueiro, and Vacas) were already habituated to humans, whereas two groups (Star Wars and Azul) were newly habituated for this study.…”

Color vision and niche partitioning in a diverse neotropical primate community in lowland Amazonian Ecuador

“…There is currently little evidence that different dichromatic phenotypes vary in detecting different types of insects or fruits (e.g., Abreu et al, 2019), and further study will be important for understanding the ecology and evolution of opsin genotypes.…”

Detection of conspicuous and cryptic food by marmosets (Callithrix jacchus): An evaluation of the importance of color and shape cues

“…Investigations presenting camouflaged geometric figures to humans (Morgan et al 1992;Saito et al 2006) and non-human primates (Saito et al 2005) showed that dichromats, when compared with trichromats, were more capable of breaking camouflage and detected hidden shapes. Indeed, some naturalistic/ecological studies gave support to the idea that the visual polymorphism of Neotropical primates balances (Hiwatashi et al 2010) the advantages of dichromats in recognizing hidden objects in the environment (Caine et al 2003;Melin et al 2007;Smith et al 2012) and those of trichromats in detecting conspicuous targets (Caine and Mundy 2000;Smith et al 2003;Melin et al 2013Melin et al , 2017Pessoa et al 2014;Abreu et al 2019).…”

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted April 12, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.11.439391 doi: bioRxiv preprint 6 molecular approaches (Travis et al 1988;Tovée et al 1992;Hunt et al 1993;Wilder et al 1996;Shyue et al 1998;Kawamura et al 2001;Surridge and Mundy 2002;Pessoa et al 2005a;Freitag and Pessoa 2012;Pessoa et al 2014;Moreira et al 2015;Abreu et al 2019;Pessoa and Freitag 2019;Mantovani et al 2020), showing that C. jacchus expresses a tri-allelic visual polymorphism, that encodes M/L pigments with maximum absorption at 543 nm, 556 nm and 562 nm, and allows the existence of six visual phenotypes (three dichromats and three trichromats) in natural populations (Jacobs 2007).…”