Lemurs
A) Lemurs usually can be found in Madagascar which was attached to the African mainland 160 million years ago. Madagascar broke off and drifted eastward. It’s isolation caused the abundance of plants and animals found nowhere else. Madagascar is known for its abundance of rain forest.
B) Generally the smaller species of lemurs eat primarily fruit and insects and the larger lemurs consume plants. Large lemurs are known to eat insects in when necessary.
C) Because Madagascar was an isolated island, lemurs had little to no competition for food and no real predators to be found. Due to this unique environment, the lemurs evolved to the island niches.
D)
Sources
Spider Monkey
A) Spider monkey live in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America. Tropical forests have consistently more species than the forests of Africa and Asia. The biodiversity of plants species occur in the tropical rain forests, specifically the Amazon Rainforest.
B) Spider monkeys are omnivores. They tend to eat fruit and seeds but they occasionally eat bark, insects, and bird eggs At zoos they are fed various fruits, seeds, leaves and flowers.
C).Like lemurs, Spider Monkeys do not have much competition for food. They are accustomed to travel from tree to tree to get their food. Due to this they did not develop opposable thumbs because swing does not require the thumb.
D)
Sources
Baboon
A) Baboons are extremely adaptable. They generally live in savannas but some live in tropical forest. Baboons tend to live around tall trees or cliff faces.
B) Baboons are also omnivores they diet consists mostly of grass, berries, seeds, leaves, roots, and sap. They have been known to eat small quantities of meat such as fish and birds.
C) Since baboons do not have a restricted diet they can live in many places. Baboons feed and socialize in groups around fifty.
D)
Sources
Gibbon
A) Gibbons are found in northern India and the islands of Indonesia. They inhabit the dense jungles and tropical rainforests across south-east Asia.
B) Gibbons are omnivorous. Three quarters of their diet is fruit ground in trees. The other quarter consists of insects, eggs, spiders, small birds, and reptiles.
C) Gibbons have evolved to live the majority of its life in the trees due to predators. Leopards and large snakes cannot climb high into the trees. Its only natural that Gibbons eat mostly tree fruits.
D)
Sources
Chimpanzee
A) Wild populations of chimpanzees are only found in Africa inhabiting the tropical rainforest of what used to be the equatorial forest belt of Africa.
B) Chimpanzees are omnivores that eat mostly figs. They also are know to eat red colobus monkey, termites and ants, and various types of fruit.
C) Since the majority of Chimpanzees’ diet consist of figs, they are found where they grow. Figs grow in dry and sunny areas with deep and fresh soil.
D)
Sources
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/02/how-to-eat-like-a-chimpanzee/
Summary
Animals must adapt to survive. To survive animals must consume food in their environment to survive. Therefore Animals adapt to consume food.
posted by Unknown @ 10:06 PM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
In general, good discussion on the lemurs. You say that the lemurs has little or no competition for food. That may have been the situation initially, but it didn't stay that way. The competition? Other lemurs as they reproduced and expanded around the island. This is why there are so many different types of lemurs; different species feed in different niches, some solely in the trees, others on the ground and others a mix of the two. Do more terrestrial type lemurs (ring-tailed) have diets different from arboreal lemurs (like mouse lemurs and lorises)?
Again, nearly all organisms have to compete with food, so it really isn't accurate to say that the spider monkey doesn't have competition for resources. They occupy a niche that provides them with the nutrition they require, but we can still make connections between the diet and the environment. Are spider monkey's primarily arboreal or do they look for food on the ground as well?
Omnivory definitely helps the baboon, since they live in a drier climate with less plant life than the tropical rainforests. Eat what you can, when you can. But that is the connection there, the less productive environment and the broad, wide-ranging diet.
Good connections made for the gibbons and I appreciate how you brought the issue of predation into the discussion. Predators are part of a primate's environment, correct?
I checked your link for the chimpanzees and didn't see anything about chimps specializing in figs, but I did find other papers about this dietary specialty. This one was interesting, hypothesizing the chimps ate more efficiently when choosing larger figs:
http://www.indiana.edu/~semliki/PDFs/WranghametaletHunt1993.pdf
The question is, do chimps live where they do because they eat figs or do they eat figs because they've adapted their diet to a highly nutritious food source? Keep an eye on your causal relationship.
That said and figs aside, like baboons, chimps still have a very broad diet. Like baboons, chimps spend a lot of time on the ground. Is there any relationship there you can discuss?
On point summation, but are primates only adapting to food or are other factors coming into play? Think of the spider monkeys and gibbons, both of which spend most of their time in the trees due to predation dangers. Does this shape their diet at all in terms of what food types are available to them?
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