Abstract
In tropical regions, most primary ecosystems have been replaced by mosaic landscapes in which species must cope with a large shift in the distribution of their habitat and associated food resources. Primates are particularly vulnerable to habitat modifications. Most species persist in small fragments surrounded by complex human-mediated matrices whose structure and connectivity may strongly influence their dispersal and feeding behavior. Behavioral plasticity appears to be a crucial parameter governing the ability of organisms to exploit the resources offered by new matrix habitats and thus to persist in fragmented habitats. In this study, we were interested in the dietary plasticity of the golden-crowned sifaka (Propithecus tattersalli), an endangered species of lemur, found only in the Daraina region in north-eastern Madagascar. We used a DNA-based approach combining the barcoding concept and Illumina next-generation sequencing to (i) describe the species diet across its entire range and (ii) evaluate the influence of landscape heterogeneity on diet diversity and composition. Faeces from 96 individuals were sampled across the entire species range and their contents were analyzed using the trnL metabarcoding approach. In parallel, we built a large DNA reference database based on a checklist of the plant species of the Daraina region. Our results suggest that golden-crowned sifakas exhibit remarkable dietary diversity with at least 130 plant species belonging to 80 genera and 49 different families. We highlighted an influence of both habitat type and openness on diet composition suggesting a high flexibility of foraging strategies. Moreover, we observed the presence of numerous cultivated and naturalized plants in the faeces of groups living in forest edge areas. Overall, our findings support our initial expectation that P. tattersalli is able to cope with the current level of alteration of the landscape and confirm our previous results on the distribution and the dispersal ability of this species.
Highlights
The earth is experiencing an accelerated loss of biodiversity
As a consequence, understanding how the landscape structure affects the performance of species and alters the functioning of ecosystems has become a major concern in conservation biology [1]
We found that by using both the local reference database and the expertise of a taxonomist of the Daraina flora, we improved the accuracy of the identification for 52% of the sequences and we more than doubled the number of MOTUs identified to the genus level
Summary
The earth is experiencing an accelerated loss of biodiversity. As a consequence, understanding how the landscape structure affects the performance of species and alters the functioning of ecosystems has become a major concern in conservation biology [1]. Most primary ecosystems are being replaced by humandominated mosaic landscapes in which plant and animal populations and species must cope with increasingly large shifts in the distribution of habitat and feeding resources across a range of spatial scales [2,3]. Primates are vulnerable [4] because almost 90% of all primate species occur in threatened forest tropical ecosystems [5] and one in four species are either Endangered or Critically Endangered [6]. This is true of lemurs that have recently been identified as the most threatened group of mammals (IUCN workshop, Antananarivo 2012). We need to increase our knowledge of species ecological and behavioral flexibility in order to assess their minimum resources requirements at multiple spatial scales (from local spatial scale to landscape scale) [3,18] and improve management and conservation actions
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