Abstract
Parasites constitute a major selective pressure which has shaped animal behaviour through evolutionary time. One adaption to parasites consists of recognizing and avoiding substrates or cues that indicate their presence. Among substrates harbouring infectious agents, faeces are known to elicit avoidance behaviour in numerous animal species. However, the function and mechanisms of faeces avoidance in non-human primates has been largely overlooked by scientists. In this study, we used an experimental approach to investigate whether aversion to faeces in a foraging context is mediated by visual and olfactory cues in two cercopithecoid primates: mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) and long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). Visual and olfactory cues of faeces elicited lower food consumption rates in mandrills and higher food manipulation rates in long-tailed macaques. Both results support the infection-avoidance hypothesis and confirm similar tendencies observed in other primate species. More studies are now needed to investigate the divergence of avoidance strategies observed in non-human primates regarding food contamination.
Highlights
Parasites, along with predators, constitute a major selective pressure which has shaped animal behaviour through evolutionary time [1]
Avoidance (A) consists of a set of actions taken by an organism to reduce its chances of becoming infected, i.e. the behavioural immune system [3,4]
Test subjects included a subset of individuals from two groups of mandrills comprising approximately 200 individuals and six groups of long-tailed macaques comprising 22 individuals at the ‘Centre International de Recherches Médicales de Franceville’ (CIRMF) in South-East Gabon
Summary
Along with predators, constitute a major selective pressure which has shaped animal behaviour through evolutionary time [1]. Analogous to the myriad adaptations of prey organisms to predation, hosts have evolved diverse ways of countering parasites; these are collectively known as the ART of parasite handling [2]. Avoidance (A) consists of a set of actions taken by an organism to reduce its chances of becoming infected, i.e. the behavioural immune system [3,4]. Resistance (R) is the ability of an organism to limit its parasite burden with the help of its immune system, which can be both physiological and behavioural in nature (i.e. selfmedication [5]; social immunity [6]). Tolerance (T) is the adaptation royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R.
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