. The Ecology of arboreal folivores : a symposium held at the Conservation and Research Center, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, May 29-31, 1975. Folivores; Forest ecology; Leaves; Mammals; Mammals. Table 1. Composition of food and ingesta in the digestive tract of Lepilemur leucopus. (From Hladik, et ah, 1971.) Natural food ingested (mixture of leaves and flowers of Alluaudia ascendens and A. pro- cera.) Stomach content (at night) Caecum content (at night) Beginning of the colon (at night) Beginning of the colon (afternoon) End of the colon (afternoon) Composition {percent o
. The Ecology of arboreal folivores : a symposium held at the Conservation and Research Center, National Zoological Park, Smithsonian Institution, May 29-31, 1975. Folivores; Forest ecology; Leaves; Mammals; Mammals. Table 1. Composition of food and ingesta in the digestive tract of Lepilemur leucopus. (From Hladik, et ah, 1971.) Natural food ingested (mixture of leaves and flowers of Alluaudia ascendens and A. pro- cera.) Stomach content (at night) Caecum content (at night) Beginning of the colon (at night) Beginning of the colon (afternoon) End of the colon (afternoon) Composition {percent of dry weight) Protein Lignocellulose Hemicelluloses Ratio of Hemicellu- loses to Lignocellulose rabbit, and they are difficult to identify in the sto- mach content; but the ramified short-chain fatty acids with uneven numbers of carbon atoms that we found in the stomach content can be used as a tracer to demonstrate the reingestion since they are typical of bacterial action and are formed in large quantities in the cecum. In Lepilemur, the adaptation for folivory includes not only morphological and physiological features, but also the very peculiar behavior for a primate, caecotrophy. This strategy allows a more complete absorption, in the small gut, of all the soluble sub- stances resulting from bacterial fermentation. Thus, an animal of 600 g of body weight survives on the poorest diet observed among primates. In terms of the calories available in the raw foodstuff before the effects of bacterial fermentation are considered, there is an intake of only Kcal per day (Charles- Dominique and Hladik, 1971). Socioecology and diet of lepilemur The utilization of leaves as a staple food involves a social strategy of habitat utilization which is a com- mon characteristic of most of the leaf-eating primates (Hladik, 1975). These convergent socio-ecological patterns
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