The role of non-natural foods in the nutritional strategies of monkeys in a human-modified mosaic landscape

Many tropical animals inhabit mosaic landscapes including human-modified habitat. In such landscapes, animals commonly adjust feeding behavior, and may incorporate non-natural foods. These behavioral shifts can influence consumers’ nutritional states, with implications for population persistence. However, few studies have addressed the nutritional role of non-natural food. We examined nutritional ecology of wild blue monkeys to understand how dietary habits related to non-natural foods might support population persistence in a mosaic landscape. We documented prevalence and nutritional composition of non-natural foods in monkey diets to assess how habitat use influenced their consumption and their contribution to nutritional strategies. While most energy and macronutrients came from natural foods, subjects focused non-natural feeding activity on five exotic plants and averaged about a third of daily calories from non-natural foods. Most non-natural food calories came from non-structural ..., The accompanying data file summarizes individual all-day focal follows of 24 wild adult female blue monkeys in the Kakamega Forest, Kenya, characterizing their daily nutrient intake based on observations of feeding behaviour combined with laboratory analysis of their foods, as described in:
Takahashi, MQ, Rothman, JM, Cords, M. 2022. The role of non-natural foods in the nutritional strategies of monkeys in a human-modified landscape mosaic. Biotropica (see both main text and supplementary material).
Please also refer to the above paper for a list of blue monkey foods categorized as natural and non-natural foods.
 
Additional information on the methods used in this study can be found in
Takahashi, MQ. 2018. The Nutritional Ecology of Adult Female Blue Monkeys, Cercopithecus mitis, in the Kakamega Forest, Kenya. PhD Thesis. Columbia University. https://doi.org/10.7916/D86M4PV3.
 
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