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Are you what you eat? Patterns in primate feeding. Goals for today. Body size and Basal Metabolic rate Body size and diet (Kay’s Threshold) Anatomy and diet Dietary patterns. Basal Metabolic rate (BMR).
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Goals for today... • Body size and Basal Metabolic rate • Body size and diet (Kay’s Threshold) • Anatomy and diet • Dietary patterns
Basal Metabolic rate (BMR) • Amount of energy an animal expends in a resting state. (measured in amount of oxygen consumed). • Table 4.2 (handout) • Mouse to elephant graph (Figure 6.1- handout)
Relative to their body size, larger animals do not expend as much energy as smaller ones. Irony of BMR
Body size and diet • Dietary intake increases with body weight (figure 9.8, handout) • Dietary patterns and diet quality fall out with body size generally. (Kay’s Threshold handout)
Jarman-Bell Principle nutrient requirement Body Weight Total nutrient requirement Large animal Large (abundent food) Small (poor quality foods) Small (rare foods) Large (high quality) small animal See Strier pg 40
Tradeoff in brain and gut • Brain and gut are big users of metabolic energy • See tradeoff in primate order between the two (see humans in particular) Aeillo and Wheeler 1995
Expensive tissue Hypothesis More complex foraging behavior Higher Diet Quality Larger Brain Increased energy available Increased Energy available Reduced bulk Rapid assimilation Smaller Gut Selection pressure Relaxed constraints Aeillo and Wheeler 1995
Foregut or Forestomach fermentor- food broken down in stomach e.g. colobus monkey. Gut Morphology Hindgut or ceaco-colic fermenter- food broken down in large intestine (Wooly monkey). See handouts in coursepak
Body size and transit time. • Figure 3 showing log body mass and log transit time (handout in coursepak) While it takes longer to process food the larger you are, not all variation explained.
Examples….. Brown lemurs Gut transit = 0.5 hrs Bamboo lemur Gut transit = 36 hrs +