Notes on Food Habits of Armadillos (Cingulata, Dasypodidae) and Anteaters (Pilosa, Myrmecophagidae) at Serra Da Capivara National Park (PiauÍ State, Brazil)

Vaz, Vanderson Corrêa; Santori, Ricardo Tadeu; Jansen, Ana Maria; Delciellos, Ana Cláudia; D’Andrea, Paulo Sérgio

doi:10.5537/020.013.0107

Cited by 26 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 22 publications

(6 reference statements)

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“…C. unicinctus has a better anatomical development than E. sexcinctus (Vizcaíno et al 1999). But differences in morphological characteristics (Marinho-Filho et al 1998;Medri et al 2011) and feed between the two species should not be forgotten (Dalponte and Tavares-Filho 2004;Anacleto 2007;Bonato et al 2008;Vaz et al 2012). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The differences between species are kept in many other morphological and anatomical features that appear related to burrowing, as previously mentioned. Other differences are in the diet, E. sexcinctus is omnivorous, feeding on vegetal material (plants, roots and fruits, invertebrates, vertebrates, and carrion (Dalponte and Tavares-Filho 2004;Vaz et al 2012). While C. unicinctus is insectivorous, the diet of these consists of more than 90 % arthropods (chiefly ants and termites) (Bonato et al 2008), but acarina and isoptera are also found (Anacleto 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Differentiation and characterization of burrows of two species of armadillos in the Brazilian Cerrado

Trovati

2015

Rev. Chil. de Hist. Nat.

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Background: Signs left by some mammals such as tracks, trails, burrows, scratches, feces, hair, and others can be an important tool for species identification. This study was conducted in the Itirapina Ecological Station, in the southern Brazilian Cerrado, whose main objectives were to (1) compare the burrow morphometric variables of Cabassous unicinctus and Euphractus sexcinctus and (2) check for differences in the occurrence of foraging burrows in two different environments: areas with vegetation (shrubby grassland) and areas without vegetation (roads). The collected measures of armadillo's burrows have been width, height, depth, and angle relative to the soil. To record foraging burrows (<70 cm), the linear transect methodology was used simultaneously in roads and shrubby grassland environments. Results: In a shrubby grassland environment of the Itirapina Ecological Station, a density of 121 burrows/ha pertaining to C. unicinctus and of 277 to E. sexcinctus was observed. Although there is overlap between them, morphometric variables were used to measure the burrows; significant differences were observed in all: depth, p < 0.001; ratio, p < 0.001; perimeter of the ellipse (perimeter), p < 0.001; and angle of excavation relative to the soil, p < 0.001. There was an observed interaction between the variables p < 0.001 for Wilk test. The PCA analysis evidenced two highly distinct groups of burrows, which corresponded to the initial visual classification. The variance explained by axes 1 and 2 was 83.18 %. The variable that most influenced the distinction of the burrows of the species was the perimeter. There was a density of 114 foraging burrows/ha across the roads and 42 in shrubby grassland. The results of the ANOVA, p < 0.05, and Tukey test, p < 0.05, demonstrate significant difference between the mean densities of foraging burrows in the said environments. This indicates that armadillos use the area devoid of vegetation to feed. Conclusions: Thus, this study provides information that can assist in the surveys of these species as well as to clarify aspects of its ecology in the Cerrado.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Differentiation and characterization of burrows of two species of armadillos in the Brazilian Cerrado

Trovati

2015

Rev. Chil. de Hist. Nat.

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“…We suspected that some samples, in particular field-collected samples, may have been contaminated postdefaecation with soil or other environmental bacteria. Also, it has been reported that faecal samples of armadillo species can contain high percentages of soil particles (Anacleto 2007;Vaz et al 2012), and some myrmecophagous animals such as pangolins are fed with an insectivore diet mixed with soil in captivity (Yang et al 2007). Because we are not able to confidently distinguish between these two scenarios, we filtered out samples that either displayed evidence of contamination or assigned to a low number of taxa previously described from mammal gut communities.…”

Section: Comparative Analyses With Other Mammalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, field-collected samples from giant anteaters and giant armadillos showed signs of soil contamination with notably one of the giant armadillo samples assigning 56% to soil. Although our application of source tracking allowed us to identify faecal samples that may have truly been contaminated with soil, we recognize that a signature of soil microbes may not be an indication of contamination, but rather a natural feature of myrmecophagous mammals feeding on ant and termite nests, as soil is ingested along with their prey (Redford 1987;Anacleto 2007;Vaz et al 2012). For example, soil particles are generally found in most armadillo species faeces (Anacleto 2007) with an estimate of 17% in the nine-banded armadillo (Beyer et al 1994).…”

Section: Diversity Of Mammalian Gut Microbiomes and The Problem Of Wimentioning

confidence: 99%

Convergence of gut microbiomes in myrmecophagous mammals

et al. 2013

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Mammals have diversified into many dietary niches. Specialized myrmecophagous (ant-and termite-eating) placental mammals represent a textbook example of evolutionary convergence driven by extreme diet specialization. Armadillos, anteaters, aardvarks, pangolins and aardwolves thus provide a model system for understanding the potential role of gut microbiota in the convergent adaptation to myrmecophagy. Here, we expand upon previous mammalian gut microbiome studies by using high-throughput barcoded Illumina sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to characterize the composition of gut microbiota in 15 species representing all placental myrmecophagous lineages and their close relatives from zoo-and field-collected samples. We confirm that both diet and phylogeny drive the evolution of mammalian gut microbiota, with cases of convergence in global composition, but also examples of phylogenetic inertia. Our results reveal specialized placental myrmecophages as a spectacular case of largescale convergence in gut microbiome composition. Indeed, neighbour-net networks and beta-diversity plots based on UniFrac distances show significant clustering of myrmecophagous species (anteaters, aardvarks and aardwolves), even though they belong to phylogenetically distant lineages representing different orders. The aardwolf, which diverged from carnivorous hyenas only in the last 10 million years, experienced a convergent shift in the composition of its gut microbiome to become more similar to other myrmecophages. These results confirm diet adaptation to be a major driving factor of convergence in gut microbiome composition over evolutionary timescales. This study sets the scene for future metagenomic studies aiming at evaluating potential convergence in functional gene content in the microbiomes of specialized mammalian myrmecophages.

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“…In T. tetradactyla diet studies, few of them are about the richness of species, in fact, that anteaters feed. It has been observed in the literature that rare species are found in the diet, possibly due to the fact that it is difficult to obtain samples in a suitable conservation state (Hayssen 2011, Sandoval-Gómez et al 2012, Vaz et al, 2012, Ferreira et al, 2015, Cunha et al, 2015. Approximately 9,000 ants can be consumed per day by an anteater (Macdonald 2007), depending on their habitat and also their state of preservation (Leal et al 1993, Lopes et al 2010, Suguituru et al 2013.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ants in the diet of Collared Anteater, Tamandua tetradactyla (Linnaeus, 1758) (Pilosa, Myrmecophagidae), in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Silva¹,

Esbérard²,

Mayhé-Nunes³

et al. 2019

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The Collared Anteater, Tamandua tetradactyla (Linnaeus, 1758), is a small mammal predator of ants. There are few studies describing which species are in fact consumed by them. This study was aimed to investigate the diversity and abundance of local species of ants preyed by the T. tetradactyla. Eight samples of stomach contents collected in the period from 2009 to 2014 were analyzed and identified at the lowest possible taxonomic level. We found 5,906 ants distributed in 16 species. The most abundant samples were number 2 and 4 with almost 2,000 individuals and the highest richness and abundance was Myrmicinae subfamily with eight species and 3,721 individuals. The ant richness found in this research demonstrates that the anteaters are generalists and opportunistic about their diet, not having a preference for a particular species, but rather for those insects that are available in their habitat.

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Notes on Food Habits of Armadillos (Cingulata, Dasypodidae) and Anteaters (Pilosa, Myrmecophagidae) at Serra Da Capivara National Park (PiauÍ State, Brazil)

Cited by 26 publications

References 22 publications

Differentiation and characterization of burrows of two species of armadillos in the Brazilian Cerrado

Differentiation and characterization of burrows of two species of armadillos in the Brazilian Cerrado

Convergence of gut microbiomes in myrmecophagous mammals

Ants in the diet of Collared Anteater, Tamandua tetradactyla (Linnaeus, 1758) (Pilosa, Myrmecophagidae), in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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