Comportamento de forrageio de saguis (Callithrix spp.) em cativeiro

• Autor(a) principal: Gomes, Daniela Fichtner
• Data de Publicação: 2011
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da PUC_RS
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/241
• topic: BIOLOGIA; ZOOLOGIA; PRIMATAS - HÁBITOS E CONDUTA; ANIMAIS - ALIMENTOS; MAMÍFEROS - CATIVEIRO; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::ZOOLOGIA

Experimental studies allow to control and test the use of different kinds of ecological and social information during foraging decisions, thereby improving our understanding of the evolution of cognitive abilities. In this study I evaluated the ability of captive marmosets (Callithrix penicillata, C. jacchus and C. penicillata vs. C. kuhlii hybrids) to use spatial, visual, olfactory, quantitative and associative cues during foraging decision-making and how the adoption of different individual foraging strategies and rules influence the access to food rewards. Thirteen groups (eight C. penicillata, three C. jacchus and two hybrids) composed of two to five individuals were studied at the Criadouro Conservacionista Arca de Noé, Morro Reuter, RS. An experimental apparatus composed of five plexiglass feeding boxes was established in each enclosure. Eight 25-days long experiments were conducted from March to November 2009. A single feeding box was baited with a food reward (two banana slices) during most experiments, whereas the remaining boxes contained the same amount of food unavailable within wire mesh cages. In the experiment testing the ability of marmosets to discriminate feeding boxes based on differences in the amount of food there were two reward feeding boxes (one with one slice and the other with three slices). Data were recorded by the all occurrences sampling method. Four study groups used spatial information (location of food rewards predictable throughout the experiment) to locate the rewarded boxes, three of which applied a win-return strategy. No group selected the rewarded box based only on the presence of an associative cue (a green block), two groups used differences in the coloration between the blocks signalizing the presence (yellow block) or absence (red block) of a food reward inside the box, whereas seven groups appear to have associated the absence of a block to the presence of available banana slices inside the box. Ten groups efficiently located the box with banana slices when they were visually accessible. On the other hand, a single group appeared to have located the rewarded box based on the smell of banana. Finally, there is evidence that the marmosets were capable of selecting feeding sites based on the amount of food available. Searching investment varied among individuals. However, it was not possible to identify any consistent pattern of adoption of the producer and scrounger strategies related to sex, age, or social rank. The order of arrival to the rewarded box(es) influenced the amount of food ingested at the individual level, reflecting the finder s advantage and the benefits of playing producer. Some adult females enjoyed priority of access to the food rewards. This study allowed to confirm the saliency of some cognitive abilities during marmoset foraging and to indicate the importance of the experimental design in this kind of research and its potential as an environmental enrichment tool for captive animals