Rare Long-Term Data Reveal the Seasonal Dietary Plasticity of Mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) in Response to Fruiting Tree Phenology.

ABSTRACT: Understanding primate dietary plasticity provides insights into trait evolution and resilience to environmental change. Here, we investigate the feeding ecology of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), a species that forms groups of close to 1000 individuals, which presumably impacts feeding ecology by creating exceptionally high feeding competition. Mandrills are also threatened by habitat loss and climate change, and a full understanding of their dietary plasticity is essential to ongoing conservation efforts. Evidence suggests that mandrills are generalist feeders and consume a wide variety of resources to compensate for shortfalls in fruit availability. However, a lack of long-term data on fruit production within the mandrill geographic range means that it is unknown whether the flexible feed

SUBMITTER: Bauld J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11913773 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature