Abstract
Temperature, rainfall, and resource availability may vary greatly within a single year in primate habitats. Many primate species show behavioral and physiological adaptations to this environmental seasonality, including changes to their diets and activity. Sahamalaza sportive lemurs (Lepilemur sahamalaza) inhabit the northwest of Madagascar and have been studied only during the dry, colder period of the year. We investigated potential effects of climate seasonality on this species by collecting behavioral data between October 2015 and August 2016, encompassing both the warmer wet and the colder dry seasons. We collected 773.15 hours of behavioral data on 14 individual sportive lemurs to investigate year-round activity budgets, ranging behavior, and sleeping site locations. Additionally we recorded temperature and rainfall data at our study site to describe the environmental conditions during the study period. The study individuals significantly decreased their time spent traveling and increased their time spent resting in the dry season compared to the wet season. Although home range size and path lengths did not differ over the study period, sleeping locations were significantly different between seasons as the lemurs focused on more confined areas in colder periods. Overall, the results indicate that Sahamalaza sportive lemur behavior varies with season, in line with reports for other primates.
Highlights
Most primate species inhabit tropical and subtropical regions (Myers et al 2000; Wilson 1988)
We considered rainfall only in analysis of path lengths for nights where rainfall was light enough to allow for full behavioral observations
Pairwise Mann–Whitney U tests revealed that maximum temperature was significantly lower in the late dry season than in the early dry (z = −1.91, P = 0.05) and the late wet season (z = −3.04, P = 0.002), despite a drop in maximum temperature during the wet season
Summary
Most primate species inhabit tropical and subtropical regions (Myers et al 2000; Wilson 1988). The degree of seasonality depends on latitude, as habitats closer to the equator do not show pronounced fluctuations in abiotic factors, such as rainfall and temperature (Addo-Bediako et al 2000; Stevens 1989; van Schaik and Pfannes 2005). In these regions, rainfall occurs year-round or in multiple shorter rainy seasons. Year-round fluctuations in photoperiod increase with increasing latitude (Hill 2005)
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