Seasonal patterns of diet and ranging in two species of tamarin monkeys: Stability versus variability

Abstract

From June through December, data were collected on the diet and ranging patterns of moustached (Saguinus mystax) and saddle-back (Saguinus fuscicollis) tamarin monkeys in the Amazon Basin of northeastern Peru. During this 7-month period, insects and nonleguminous fruits accounted for 83% of tamarin feeding and foraging time. Despite marked seasonal variation in rainfall and forest productivity, patterns of habitat utilization, day range, dietary diversity, resource exploitation, and activity budget remained relatively stable throughout the year. Moustached and saddle-back tamarins appear to solve problems of food acquisition and exploit patchily distributed feeding sites using a relatively limited set of foraging patterns. In general, these primates concentrate their daily feeding efforts on several trees from a small number of target plant species. These feeding sites are uncommon, produce only a small amount of ripe fruit each day, and are characterized by a high degree of intraspecific fruiting and flowering synchrony. Trees of the same species are frequently visited in succession, and individual feeding sites are revisited several times over the course of 1–2 weeks. This type of foraging pattern occurred during both dry and wet seasons and when exploiting fruit, nectar, legume, and exudate resources. Seasonal variation in the percentage of feeding and foraging time devoted to insectivory was also limited. In this investigation, there was no consistent evidence that temporal changes in overall forest fruit production had a major impact on the feeding, foraging, or ranging behavior of either tamarin species.