Abstract
Dealing effectively with space to find important resources in a natural environment is a fundamental
ability necessary for survival. Evidence has already been provided that wild gray mouse lemurs revisit
stationary feeding sites regularly. In this study, we explore to what extent two sympatric mouse lemur
species, Microcebus murinus and M. ravelobensis, revisited artificial feeding sites during a period of food
scarcity. As the tested populations are marked with individual transponders, we built up artificial
feeding platforms equipped with a transponder reader at nine different locations where mouse lemurs
had been previously caught. We baited them with a liquid reward and recorded the visitors’ ID, the time
and frequency of their visits, as well as all encounters that occurred on the platforms. Only mouse
lemurs visited platforms and a total of sixteen individuals across both species were identified. Mouse
lemurs visited a platform with a frequency of 2.02 (70.95, range: 1–3.4) times in a night and they
revisited it on several consecutive nights following their first visit (percentage of revisits 90.6%711.7,
range: 73.3–100%). First visits on a platform occurred on average 44 min (735; range: 13–131) after
sunset. We identified encounters between mouse lemurs on platforms: all of them were agonistic and
within a species. Within a dyad, chasers were significantly heavier than chasees (N 5 7 dyads). Our
design of platform experiments offers the advantage of observing wild individually known small
primates in their natural environment and of setting up controlled experiments to gain insight into
their sensory and cognitive abilities. Am. J. Primatol. 70:892–896, 2008.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 892-896 |
Journal | American Journal of Primatology |
Volume | 70 |
Issue number | 9 |
Early online date | 16 Jun 2008 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sept 2008 |