Seasonal Activity Rhythms, Reproduction, and Body Weight Variations in Five Sympatric Nocturnal Prosimians, in Simulated Light and Climatic Conditions

Petter‐Rousseaux, A.

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-169350-3.50011-3

Cited by 78 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…However, as documented by several studies (cf. Hladik et al, 1980;Petter-Rousseaux, 1980;Perret, 1985), this artificial cycle can mimic and maintain the natural cycle. During this study the large differences between the two groups in weight, as well as agility, demonstrated repeatedly that we were recording from animals in the two different phases.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pattern of body weight changes can also be maintained in captivity by variation in length of light (Petter-Rousseaux, 1980). This allows the closer study of the seasonal changes in M.murinus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The animals were from a colony of M.murinus kept on an artificial cycle of 8 months of long days/short nights and 4 months of short days/long nights (Petter-Rousseaux, 1980) at the Laboratoire d'Ecologie Generale, Brunoy, France.…”

Section: Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the relationship between sweet taste and seasonal body weight changes in a primate (Microcebus murinus)

Hellekant¹,

Hladik²,

Dennys³

et al. 1993

Chem Senses

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Abstract.The relationship between obesity and taste, especially sweet taste, has been and is of interest. From this point of view of a small primate, the lesser mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus), is of particular interest. It goes through a yearly cycle of physiological changes, one of which is an extreme variation in body weight of up to 100%. This occurs concomitantly with significant changes of the animal's liking for sucrose; measured by two-bottle preference tests, the threshold for sucrose changes from 28-45 in lean to 77-105 mM in obese animals. It is possible that a change in peripheral taste sensitivity might be the cause for these preference changes. To test this possibility we studied the ability of M. murinus to taste sucrose with electrophysiological and conditioned taste aversion techniques. The electrophysiological recordings were obtained from the chorda tympani proper nerve in two heavy and three lean animals. We did not record any difference between the two groups in their neural response to a series of sucrose concentrations. Conditioned taste aversion experiments with 200 mM sucrose as conditioning stimulus and 50 and 200 mM sucrose as test stimuli gave similar results. No difference was found between three heavy and four lean animals; both groups rejected the sucrose concentrations. The results support the notion that the seasonal variations in preference threshold to sucrose were unrelated to the ability of M. murinus to taste sucrose.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the relationship between sweet taste and seasonal body weight changes in a primate (Microcebus murinus)

Hellekant¹,

Hladik²,

Dennys³

et al. 1993

Chem Senses

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show abstract

“…All M. murinus were from a colony kept on an artificial 8 month cycle of long days/short nights and 4 months of short days/long nights (Petter-Rousseaux, 1980) at the Laboratoire d'Ecologie Generale, Brunoy, France. The E.mongoz used for electrophysiology was housed in an outside cage at Brunoy, while the two E.mongoz used for two-bottle preference (TBP) tests were housed under controlled climatic conditions.…”

Section: Animalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This seems to contrast with the work of Glaser et al (1978). However, it should be noted that M.murinus passes through a yearly cycle which strongly affects several biological parameters (Petter-Rousseaux, 1980;Perret, 1985), including its TBP threshold for sucrose. Simmen and Hladik (1988) found tfiat this threshold varies between 28-45 mM at one time of the year to 77-105 mM at another time and questioned whether or not there is a seasonal variation in the ability of M.murinus to taste sucrose.…”

Section: Monellinmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the sense of taste in two Malagasy Primates (Microcebus murinus and Eulemur mongoz)

Hellekant¹,

Hladik

Dennys

et al. 1993

Chem Senses

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Abstract. The relationship between phytogeny and taste is of growing interest. In this study we present recordings from the chorda tympani proper (CT) nerve of two lemuriforroe primates, the lesser mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) and the mongoose lemur (Eulemur mongoz), to an array of taste stimuli which included the sweeteners acesulfame-K, alitame, aspartame, D-glucose, dulcin, monellin, neohesperidin dihydrochalcone (NHDHC), saccharin, sodium superaspartame, stevioside, sucralose (TGS), sucrose, suosan, thanmnrin and xyhtol, as well as the non-sweet stimuli NaCl, citric acid, tannin and quinine hydrochloride. In M.murinus the effects of the taste modifiers gymnemic acid and miraculin on the CT response were recorded. Conditioned taste aversion (CTA) experiments in M.murinus and two-bottle preference (TBP) tests in E.mongoz were also conducted. We found that all of the above tastants except thaumatin elicited a CT response in both species. The CTA technique showed that M.murinus generalized from sucrose to monellin but not to thaumatin. The intake of aspartame, ranging in concentration from 0.1 to 30 mM was measured in E.mongoz with TBP tests. At no concentration did we see a preference, but there was a significant rejection of 10 and 30 mM aspartame (/ > <0.025). Miraculin had no effects on the CT response to acids, and gymnemic acid did not selectively suppress the CT response to sucrose or that of any other sweeteners. The absence of ability to taste thaumatin in these species supports the dichotomy between catarrhine and non-catarrhine species. The difference in results with thaumatin and monellin indicate that their sweet moieties are not identical. It also points to a phylogenetic difference in taste within the prosimian group. Further, the results with aspartame indicate that the perception of sweetness from aspartame is limited to catarrhine species. Finally, neither miraculin nor gymnemic acid exhibit the same taste modifying effects in lemuriformes as they do in hominoidea. Thus the results with gymnemic acid and miraculin corroborate those obtained earlier in other prosimians.

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Lemur traits and Madagascar ecology: Coping with an island environment

Wright¹

1999

Am. J. Phys. Anthropol.

507

496

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The last decade's lemur research includes successes in discovering new living and extinct species and learning about the distribution, biogeography, physiology, behavior, and ecology of previously little-studied species. In addition, in both the dry forest and rain forest, long-term studies of lemur demography, life history, and reproduction, have been completed in conjunction with data on tree productivity, phenology, and climate. Lemurs contrast with anthropoids in several behavioral features, including female dominance, targeted female-female aggression, lack of sexual dimorphism regardless of mating system, sperm competition coupled with male-male aggression, high infant mortality, cathemerality, and strict seasonal breeding. Hypotheses to explain these traits include the "energy conservation hypothesis" (ECH) suggesting that harsh and unpredictable climate factors on the island of Madagascar have affected the evolution of female dominance, and the "evolutionary disequilibrium hypotheses" (EVDH) suggesting that the recent megafauna extinctions have influenced lemurs to become diurnal. These hypotheses are compared and contrasted in light of recent empirical data on climate, subfossils, and lemur behavior. New data on life histories of the rain forest lemurs at Ranomafana National Park give further support to the ECH. Birth seasons are synchronized within each species, but there is a 6-month distribution of births among species. Gestation and lactation lengths vary among sympatric lemurs, but all lemur species in the rain forest wean in synchrony at the season most likely to have abundant resources. Across-species weaning synchrony seen in Ranomafana corroborates data from the dry forest that late lactation and weaning is the life history event that is the primary focus of the annual schedule. Lemur adaptations may assure maximum offspring survival in this environment with an unpredictable food supply and heavy predation. In conclusion, a more comprehensive energy frugality hypothesis (EFH) is proposed, which postulates that the majority of lemur traits are either adaptations to conserve energy (e.g., low basal metabolic rate (BMR), torpor, sperm competition, small group size, seasonal breeding) or to maximize use of scarce resources (e.g., cathemerality, territoriality, female dominance, fibrous diet, weaning synchrony). Among primates, the isolated adaptive radiation of lemurs on Madagascar may have been uniquely characterized by selection toward efficiency to cope with the harsh and unpredictable island environment.

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Seasonal Activity Rhythms, Reproduction, and Body Weight Variations in Five Sympatric Nocturnal Prosimians, in Simulated Light and Climatic Conditions

Cited by 78 publications

References 4 publications

On the relationship between sweet taste and seasonal body weight changes in a primate (Microcebus murinus)

On the relationship between sweet taste and seasonal body weight changes in a primate (Microcebus murinus)

On the sense of taste in two Malagasy Primates (Microcebus murinus and Eulemur mongoz)

Lemur traits and Madagascar ecology: Coping with an island environment

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