Overall, more studies are needed of species with large geographic ranges to better understand their dietary and nutritional flexibility and constraints. Primates may strive for nutritional balancing in environments with differing food availability. For some primate species, the nutritional content of major dietary items did not differ, even if the species composition and habitats varied, whereas in other cases, the nutritional content varied notably for populations living in differing forest types. While many studies have focused on intraspecific variability in diet composition, less work has been conducted on the variability of nutritional intake. On a finer scale, understanding how animals meet their nutritional goals or examining the nutritional content of foods in varying environments helps to elucidate their ability to deal with spatial and temporal variability in food availability. In some cases, variability was observed in social groups living in close proximity, whereas in other cases it encompassed large geographic areas. Among the great apes, intraspecific variability in diet has been examined in habituated orangutans, chimpanzees, and mountain gorillas, and based on feeding remains from unhabituated western gorillas. Intraspecific variation in diet has been observed in all Primate taxa and is largely considered a reflection of temporal and spatial variation in forest composition. ![]() Furthermore, when studying extant great apes, examining dietary variability has implications for understanding the evolution of Homo. Quantifying dietary variability also is useful for developing conservation strategies because it provides information about the constraints and flexibility in a species’ diet and hence the range of suitable habitat. Intraspecific variability in food availability and diet also influences species distribution and the density of a species in a given area. How primates respond to such variability is crucial to their ability to survive and reproduce and relates to many components of a species’ biology including morphology, cognitive abilities, life history patterns, space use, and patterns of sociality. The availability of food for a particular animal species varies in both temporal and spatial dimensions: seasonally, inter-annually, and across locations. The funders had no role in the study design, data collectoin and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.įunding: Funding was provided to MMR by Max Planck Society, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Great Ape Fund, Tusk Trust, Berggorilla und Direkthilfe, and Taipei Zoo. ![]() Received: JanuAccepted: JPublished: August 24, 2022Ĭopyright: © 2022 Robbins et al. PLoS ONE 17(8):Įditor: Emmanuel Serrano, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, SPAIN This study shows the flexibility of diet of a species with a wide geographic distribution, which has implications for understanding variation in life history characteristics and can be useful for conservation management plans.Ĭitation: Robbins MM, Ortmann S, Seiler N (2022) Dietary variability of western gorillas ( Gorilla gorilla gorilla). ![]() Even though the species composition of the diet differed among the three sites, the nutritional composition of the major food items differed very little, suggesting that western gorillas consume foods of similar nutritional values to meet their dietary needs. ![]() Gorillas at those sites spent about 5% of feeding time eating insects, which were not consumed by Loango gorillas. The Loango gorillas spent approximately 10% of feeding time eating nuts, which were not consumed at the other two study sites. The major foods consumed by the Loango gorillas differed greatly from the other two study sites, but gorillas at all three locations spent a similar proportion of feeding time consuming herbaceous vegetation and tree leaves (~ 50%) and fruit (35%). Here we quantify the diet and nutritional content of plants consumed by western lowland gorillas ( Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in Loango National Park, Gabon over a 2.6 year period and make comparisons with two study sites located 800 km away. Despite such potential impacts, little information is available about dietary variability for some species with large geographical ranges. Spatial and temporal variability in the availability of food resources will lead to variation in a species’ diet, which can then influence patterns of space use, sociality, and life history characteristics.
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