No abstract

Climatic conditions can significantly affect the behaviour of animals and constrain their activity or geographic distribution. The Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus) is one of the few primates that live outside the tropics. Here we analyse if and how the activity budgets of the Barbary macaque are affected by climatic variables (i.e. air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, and snow coverage). We collected scan sampling data, over a period of almost three years, on the activity budgets of four groups of macaques living in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. This habitat is characterized by extreme seasonal changes, from cold and snowy winters, to hot and dry summers. The activity budgets of the macaques differed across months but not across the time of day (with the exception of time spent feeding). The monkeys spent significantly more time feeding or foraging when there was no snow than when snow coverage was moderate or major.Daily rainfall was positively related to resting time and negatively to time spent moving or in social behaviour. Air temperature was negatively related to time spent feeding or foraging. Finally, time spent on social behaviour was significantly lower when relative humidity was high. These data indicate that environmental factors significantly affect the time budgets of the endangered Barbary macaque, a species that has been little studied in the wild. Our study is one of the first accounts of how a temperate primate responds to climatic variables.

No abstract

Habitat, diet and leaf chemistry are compared between Japanese and Barbary macaques to reveal the similarities and differences in dietary adaptations of temperate primates living at the eastern and western extremes of the genus Macaca. Tree species diversity and proportion of fleshy-fruited species are much higher in Japan than in North Africa. Both species spend considerable annual feeding time on leaves. Japanese macaques prefer fruits and seeds over leaves, and Barbary macaques prefer seeds. These characteristics are adaptive in temperate regions where fruit availability varies considerably with season, since animals can survive during the lean period by relying on leaf and other vegetative foods. The two species are different with respect to the higher consumption of herbs by Barbary macaques, and the leaves consumed contain high condensed and hydrolysable tannin for Barbary but not for Japanese macaques. Barbary macaques supplement less diverse tree foods with herbs. Because of the low species diversity and high tannin content of the dominant tree species, Barbary macaques may have developed the capacity to cope with tannin. This supports the idea that digestion of leaves is indispensable to survive in temperate regions where fruit and seed foods are not available for a prolonged period during each year.

25The wounding or death of a conspecific has been shown to elicit varied behavioral responses