Does Resource Availability Affect the Diet and Behavior of the Vulnerable Squirrel Monkey, Saimiri vanzolinii?

Abstract

Seasonal changes in food availability influence the behavior and diet of primates, and an understanding of dietary changes is important for the development of informed conservation plans. Saimiri vanzolinii is a small-bodied, omnivorous squirrel monkey endemic to the floodplain forests in Central Amazonia. It has a restricted distribution of only ca. 870 km2 and is classified as Vulnerable. We examined seasonal variation in this species’ diet. We collected phenological (presence and absence of ripe fruits from 205 tree species) and dietary and behavioral data for unhabituated groups of S. vanzolinii on nine 2-km transects in the floodplain forests of Central Amazonia for 2 years, encompassing the high-water and low-water periods. Fruit availability was higher, and the monkeys traveled less and fed more during the high-water than the low-water period. There were no seasonal differences between the high-water and low-water periods in the time spent feeding on fruits, flowers, or arthropods. S. vanzolinii spent more time consuming fruit than arthropods in the high-water period, but this was not the case in the low-water period. These findings suggest that food selection changed between seasons, and S. vanzolinii focused more on fruit in the low-water period, when fruit was less available, than in the high-water period, when fruit was more available. These results support the predictions of the ecological constraints model.