Dust affects chewing efficiency and tooth wear in forest dwelling Western chimpanzees (<scp><i>Pan troglodytes</i></scp><i>verus</i>)

Schulz‐Kornas, Ellen; Stuhlträger, Julia; Clauss, Marcus; Wittig, Roman M.; Kupczik, Kornelius

doi:10.1002/ajpa.23808

Cited by 39 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Feeding sequences were available for a period of up to 12 days prior to death of these individuals and fall within the range of the suggested duration of microwear formation for primates (Teaford and Oyen, 1989). Raw data of adult chimpanzee feeding observations were taken from Schulz-Kornas et al (2019) (see Supplemental Data Table S1), but the food categories therein were adjusted for our data set. The feeding duration was calculated as the mean feeding time (in %) per day for each individual.…”

Section: Long-term Feeding Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the age group comparison we analyzed specimens that had died during wet and dry periods. We are aware that seasonality in the Taï National Park can affect 3DSTs (Schulz-Kornas et al, 2019), but due to a limited sample size for specimens died during dry periods (see Supplemental Data Table S1) we could not include seasonality as an extra factor in our age group analysis. However, additionally to the age group comparison using the whole data set (data set 1 = specimens from wet and dry period) we conducted the same tests using a reduced data set (data set 2 = specimens from wet periods only) to see if the removal of specimens whose 3DSTs may be affected by external abrasives (e.g., dust during the dry period) change the results from the age group comparison.…”

Section: Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, additionally to the age group comparison using the whole data set (data set 1 = specimens from wet and dry period) we conducted the same tests using a reduced data set (data set 2 = specimens from wet periods only) to see if the removal of specimens whose 3DSTs may be affected by external abrasives (e.g., dust during the dry period) change the results from the age group comparison. Additionally, we selected 17 3DST parameters that fit our predictions but were not affected by seasonality in a previous study on 3DSTs in the same population (Schulz-Kornas et al, 2019).…”

Section: Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other than microwear signatures caused by internal dietary abrasives, external dust or grit ingested together with the diet may contribute to wear (e.g., Covert and Kay, 1981;Nystrom et al, 2004), by increasing scratch formation frequencies (Romero et al, 2012). Recently, it was shown that the 3DST of chimpanzees of the Taï National Park is influenced by a yearly dust accumulation during dry periods, leading to surface textures with more fine furrows and dales (Schulz-Kornas et al, 2019). While wind-borne dust particles seem to affect the amount and size of surface texture features, at least in those chimpanzees of the Taï National Park, we assume that internal dietary abrasives affect the surface texture in a more versatile way depending on the dietary composition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently a mixture of smaller and larger seeds, considered as hard objects, produce complex facet surfaces with pits/dales and scratches/valleys varying in size and density (Teaford and Robinson, 1989;Lucas, 2004;Scott et al, 2006). An increase in the amount of such hard objects in the diet has been shown to correlate with an increase in surface texture complexity , surface texture height and volume, and a decrease in feature area (Calandra et al, 2012;Schulz-Kornas et al, 2019). Kaiser et al (2015) proposed that soft diets, i.e., those with low matrix resistance, allow for a closer contact of the occluding teeth during mastication and therefore result in smooth and less complex wear facets with shallow pits/dales and scratches/valleys.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ontogenetic Dietary Shifts and Microscopic Tooth Wear in Western Chimpanzees

et al. 2019

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Microscopic tooth wear studies on primates have largely focused on interspecific dietary comparisons, while few have addressed intraspecific variations, such as those among age groups. Here, we examined to what extent dietary shifts during ontogeny can be revealed from microscopic tooth wear in a western chimpanzee population using 3D surface texture (3DST) analysis. To this end, we analyzed feeding observation data of 14 chimpanzees of the Taï National Park (Ivory Coast) and matched them to 3DST data analyzed on two wear facets (f9, f3) of deciduous fourth premolars and permanent molars of 41 specimens (infants, juveniles, adolescents, adults) of the same population. We expected to find an age-dependent increase in texture complexity resulting from the more frequent consumption of seeds and insects in older compared to younger individuals. Furthermore, we expected the introduction of phytolith-producing plants to the diet of post-weaned individuals to result in many small and parallel-orientated 3DST features in juveniles, adolescents and adults compared to infants. We found that the 3DST pattern did not mirror the observed increase in dietary breadth from infants to adults. However, we found that age-dependent differences in the consumption of phytolith-producing plants were reflected to some extent in the 3DST pattern: infants and adolescents who spent more time feeding on phytolith-producing plants than older individuals had more parallel orientated 3DSTs with higher peaks, while adults had flatter and more randomly orientated 3DST features. Our results suggest that phytoliths as small abrasive particles may be of greater importance for the 3DST formation than food categories, such as fruits, leaves or seeds. However, compared to the variation in the feeding data, 3DST results show only little variation among age groups. We conclude that 3DST does not explicitly reflect ontogenetic dietary changes in chimpanzees. Rather, other factors, such as individual-or sex-based feeding habits as well as seasonal variation in dust accumulation, may be of greater importance for 3DST formation.

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Section: Long-term Feeding Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ontogenetic Dietary Shifts and Microscopic Tooth Wear in Western Chimpanzees

et al. 2019

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Effects of diet and age–sex class on the fecal particle size of wild Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata yakui)

Lee

Hanya

2021

American J Primatol

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Fecal particle size provides important information on the feeding and digestion of herbivores. Understanding the effects of the potential proximate determinants on fecal particle size helps us interpret this widely used measurement. In folivores, previous studies found that diet composition, dietary toughness, and age-sex-related factors, such as body size and tooth wear, influenced fecal particle size. However, the role of these factors remains unknown in frugivorous and omnivorous primates. This study aims to clarify how age-sex class and diet influence fecal particle size in omnivorous Japanese macaques in Yakushima. We expected that their variable diet and differences among age-sex classes would cause variations in fecal particle size. We simultaneously documented Japanese macaques' diet, dietary toughness, and fecal particle size in the lowland area of Yakushima in the period from March 2018 to April 2019.Unexpectedly, fecal particle size showed limited differences across months and no difference among age-sex classes. Dietary toughness showed no effects on fecal particle size, while the consumption of fruits showed only a marginally significant negative effect. Our data indicate that the results of chewing were not affected by dietary toughness in our study subjects, while age-sex classes showed no difference in food comminution. This lack of variation might derive from a diet with low dietary toughness. We also found that the physical structure of preferred foods played an important role in fecal particle size variations. These results suggest that food comminution is less variable in frugivorous and omnivorous primates compared to highly specialized species (e.g., geladas). Factors other than what we examined in this study, such as food physical structure and chewing behavior, should also be taken into consideration.

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A skew in poo: Biases in primate fecal isotope analysis and recommendations for standardized sample preparation

Oelze

O'Neal

Wittig

et al. 2022

American J Primatol

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Feces are a treasure trove in the study of animal behavior and ecology. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis allows to assess the dietary niches of elusive primate species and primate breastfeeding behavior. However, some fecal isotope data may unwillingly be biased toward the isotope ratios of undigested plant matter, requiring more consistent sample preparation protocols. We assess the impact of this potential data skew in 114 fecal samples of wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) by measuring the isotope differences (Δ13C, Δ15N) between bulk fecal samples containing larger particles (>1 mm) and filtered samples containing only small particles (<1 mm). We assess the influence of fecal carbon and nitrogen content (ΔC:N) and sample donor age (subadult, adult) on the resulting Δ13C, Δ15N values (n = 228). Additionally, we measure the isotope ratios in three systematically sieved fecal samples of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), with particle sizes ranging from 20 μm to 8 mm (n = 30). We found differences in fecal carbon and nitrogen content, with the smaller fecal fraction containing more nitrogen on average. While the Δ13C values were small and not affected by age or ΔC:N, the Δ15N values were significantly influenced by fecal ΔC:N, possibly resulting from the differing proportions of undigested plant macroparticles. Significant relationships between carbon stable isotope ratios (δ13C) values and %C in large fecal fractions of both age groups corroborated this assessment. Δ15N values were significantly larger in adults than subadults, which should be of concern in isotope studies comparing adult females with infants to assess breastfeeding. We found a random variation of up to 3.0‰ in δ13C and 2.0‰ in nitrogen stable isotope ratios within the chimpanzee fecal samples separated by particle sizes. We show that particle size influences isotope ratios and propose a simple, cost‐effective filtration method for primate feces to exclude larger undigested food particles from the analysis, which can easily be adopted by labs worldwide.

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Dust affects chewing efficiency and tooth wear in forest dwelling Western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytesverus)

Cited by 39 publications

References 88 publications

Ontogenetic Dietary Shifts and Microscopic Tooth Wear in Western Chimpanzees

Ontogenetic Dietary Shifts and Microscopic Tooth Wear in Western Chimpanzees

Effects of diet and age–sex class on the fecal particle size of wild Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata yakui)

A skew in poo: Biases in primate fecal isotope analysis and recommendations for standardized sample preparation

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