By: J Grajeda
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Comparative Primate Blog:
Sifaka
(Prosimians/Strepsirhini representative)
· The species has an
extremely limited distribution, they are confined to a number of discontinuous
forest fragments between the Manambato and Loky Rivers in northeast of
Madagascar.
· Sifakas are
predominantly arboreal and diurnal although sometimes active before dawn and
after dusk during the rainy season. They eat a variety of unripe fruit, sees,
shoots, and leaves. When food is scarce during the dry season, they will eat
bark.
· Sifakas has one of
the smallest ranges and documented population sizes of any lemur. No part of
the species’ range is protected. Isolated patches of forests which remain are
under pressure from burn agriculture and logging. Mining for gold has led to
further habitat loss, and miners hunt them for food. They are classified as
critically endangered species.
· New world, Spider
Monkeys are found in tropical rain forests in Central and South America, from
southern Mexico to Brazil. They live in wet and dense tropical rainforests.
Predation is present by indigenous people who hunt them for food and pet trade;
in addition logging and deforestation continues to reduce habitat and
resources, main predators are jaguars, pumas, and large snakes.
· Omnivore; their diet
includes nuts, fruits, leaves, bird eggs, honey, insect larvae, and spiders.
Olive Baboon (Old World Monkey/Cercopithecidae representative)
· Olive baboons live in
a variety of habitat, open grassland near wooded areas, they also found in
moist evergreen forests and near human habitation and cultivation. In Ethiopia
baboons can be found near valley bottoms, utilizing all habitats found from the
valley floor to the plateau. The rainy season is from July to September and the
dry season extends from mid-September to June with an average of 5.5 feet of
rain. Daytime temperatures reach 35 Celsius and remain throughout the year.
· Olive baboons
consume a wide range of foods, they have ability to extract food and nutrients
from almost strata of the environment. Baboons are omnivores and consume roots,
tubers, corns, fruits, leaves, flowers, buds, seeds, bark, birds, bird eggs and
vertebrates.
· Known predators of
baboons include lions, leopards, wild dogs, hyenas, chimpanzees, crocodiles and
raptors which are more serious threat juveniles and infants.
Lars Gibbon (Lesser ape/Hylobatidae representative)
· Lar Gibbons are
mainly found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand. For
the most part Gibbons are found in lowland forest, mixed deciduous bamboo
forest, seasonal evergreen rainforest. In Thailand three seasons are
experienced, cool season is from November to February, hot season is from March
thru May and wet season from June thru October. Annual rainfall averages 78” to
118’’ most falling in June thru September. Temperatures average between 25 and
30 Celsius.
· Gibbons diet includes
a variety of fruits, figs, berries, liana fruits, vine shoots, young leaves,
and insects including mantids, wasps and birds’ eggs. Food competition exist
with other animals, including pigtail macaques, and dusky leaf monkeys.
· Threat predation exist
to adult and infant gibbons by leopards, marbled cats, Asian golden cats, and hawk
eagles. Chimpanzee (Great ape/Hominidae representative)
· Chimpanzees our
closets living relative, they share 98.6% of our DNA.
· Chimpanzees can be
found in many regions of west and central Africa as well as Asia, China, Laos,
Indonesia, and Cambodia. Climate varies depending on the region, but they are
generally found in rain forest and wet savannas.
· They feed on fruits, leaves, buds, blossoms,
berries, seeds, their diet consist of 80different plant foods.
· Chimpanzees are
steadily decreasing; wilderness areas critical to their survival are
disappearing at an alarming rate mainly due to deforestation, farming and other
activities. Another factor has been recent Ebola hemorrhagic fever, threaten to
decimate chimpanzee populations in Republic of Congo and Gabon.
While performing my research on all five different primates, most groups shared common behaviors such as living in small, medium and large groups, protecting themselves from predators and other dangers. They were competing for resources and seem to have a hierarchy status.
I have taken notice on how you presented your information it seems most of the primates base their diet of their habitat being the fact their omnivores their diet seem to be similar other predators present in the rain forest
ReplyDeleteVery interesting post. I love how you presented all the information of the primates diets and how it corresponds with their habitat.
ReplyDeleteI note that when you started discussing the influence of the environment, you tended to focus on the negative impact of humans or on the threat of predation. All of these traits arose long before humans ever came on this scene. We are looking at how the natural (non-human) environment shaped these traits, not how humans are threatening their lives now. Also, since your trait topic is diet, how does predation influence this? What aspects of the environment directly influence the food resources available to these primates? For example, baboons have a remarkably diverse diet. They are opportunistic and will eat just about anything but their territories are limited by the availability of water, which is also a dietary need. Could their opportunism and diet be at all impacted by their savannah environment? These were the questions I hoped you would explore here.
ReplyDeleteGood descriptions of the environments and the diets. It is just the connection between the two that was not addressed.
You did look for patterns in your summary, but you strayed from your trait topic of diet. What patterns did you see in the relationship between the environment of a primate and their diet?
Okay on your images, but your spider monkey picture is actually a lemur. ;-) Keep an eye on the source info for your images as well as your content. Both can be misleading.