sight or scent lemur sensory reliance in detecting food quality varies with feeding ecology视觉或气味狐猴感官检测食品质量随摄食生态的依赖.pdfVIP

Sight or Scent: Lemur Sensory Reliance in Detecting Food Quality Varies with Feeding Ecology Julie Rushmore1,2, Sara D. Leonhardt1,3,4, Christine M. Drea1,4* 1 Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 2 Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, ¨ Georgia, United States of America, 3 Department of Ecology, Leuphana University, Luneburg, Germany, 4 Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America Abstract Visual and olfactory cues provide important information to foragers, yet we know little about species differences in sensory reliance during food selection. In a series of experimental foraging studies, we examined the relative reliance on vision versus olfaction in three diurnal, primate species with diverse feeding ecologies, including folivorous Coquerel’s sifakas (Propithecus coquereli), frugivorous ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata spp), and generalist ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta). We used animals with known color-vision status and foods for which different maturation stages (and hence quality) produce distinct visual and olfactory cues (the latter determined chemically). We first showed that lemurs preferentially selected high-quality foods over low-quality foods when visual and olfactory cues were simultaneously available for both food types. Next, using a novel apparatus in a series of discrimination trials, we either manipulated food quality (while holding sensory cues constant) or manipulated sensory cues (while holding food quality constant). Among our study subjects that showed relatively strong preferences for high-quality foods, folivores required both sensory cues combined to reliably identify their