Ecological and evolutionary significance of primates' most consumed plant families

Abstract

Angiosperms have been essential components of primate diets for millions of years, but the relative importance of different angiosperm families remains unclear. Here, we assess the contribution and ecological and evolutionary significance of plant families to diets of wild primates by compiling an unprecedented dataset of almost 9000 dietary records from 141 primary sources covering 112 primate species. Of the 205 angiosperm plant families recorded in primate diets, only 10 were consumed by more than half of primate species. Plants of the Moraceae and Fabaceae families were the most widely and frequently consumed, and they likely represent keystone resources for primates. Over 75% of species fed on these two families, and together they made up a median of approximately 13% of primate diets. By analysing the relative proportion of different plant parts consumed, we found that Moraceae was mainly eaten as fruit and Fabaceae as non-fruit parts, with the consumption of these two families not showing a significant phylogenetic signal across primate species. Moraceae consumption was associated with small home range sizes, even though more frugivorous primates tended to have larger home ranges compared to more folivorous species, possibly due to the year-round availability of moraceous fruits and the asynchrony in their phenology. Our results suggest that primates may be intricately and subtly shaped by the plant families that they have consumed over millions of years, and highlight the importance of detailed dietary studies to better understand primate ecology and evolution.

Phylogenetic congruence between Neotropical primates and plants is driven by frugivory

“…Besides fruits, Platyrrhini primates also include leaves, flowers, seeds, nuts, nectar, and animal prey as feeding resources (Hawes & Peres, 2014; Lim et al, 2021). Distinct amounts of each item vary across taxa (Hawes & Peres, 2014; Lim et al, 2021), thus less frugivorous primates and other coexisting frugivorous clades may act together favouring a process known as diffuse coevolution (Erikson 2016).…”

“…Besides fruits, Platyrrhini primates also include leaves, flowers, seeds, nuts, nectar, and animal prey as feeding resources (Hawes & Peres, 2014; Lim et al, 2021). Distinct amounts of each item vary across taxa (Hawes & Peres, 2014; Lim et al, 2021), thus less frugivorous primates and other coexisting frugivorous clades may act together favouring a process known as diffuse coevolution (Erikson 2016). It is unlikely that frugivores and plants share a very tight coevolutionary history (Valenta & Nevo, 2020), such as those observed in host‐parasite interactions (Brooks, 1988; Gandon & Michalakis, 2002), or plant‐pollinator interactions (Herrera, 2019).…”

“…Frugivory has evolved independently numerous times along the evolutionary history of vertebrates. This is also true for Neotropical primates (Hawes & Peres, 2014), a major Order of fruiteating vertebrates (Fleming and Kress, 2013;Lim et al, 2021). Fruit intake is a condition for dispersal potential, and all Platyrrhini primates routinely eat fruits (Hawes & Peres, 2014).…”

“…A persistent knowledge gap preventing a broader understanding of the role of fruit‐frugivore interactions in shaping the evolution of primates and plants lies in the methodological challenges in addressing the consequences of seed dispersal to the concurrent diversification of both interacting clades (DeCasien et al 2017, Scott, 2019). Seed dispersal is a mutualistic interaction characterised by low degree of specialisation (Donatti et al, 2011; Stiles & Rosselli, 1993), and most primates have generalist feeding habits, consuming fruits from a wide range of plant species (Hawes & Peres, 2014; Heymann & Fuzessy, 2021; Lim et al, 2021). Thus, the potential of the mutual fitness benefits in promoting plant‐primate co‐diversification (correlation in speciation events) and/or coevolution (reciprocal evolutionary changes in traits) remains challenging to assess.…”

“…The amount of fruit in the diet has significant consequences on the quality components of the seed dispersal effectiveness (Fuzessy et al, 2016(Fuzessy et al, , 2017). Yet, the extent to which variation in the degree of frugivory explains a possible shared evolutionary history between primates and Angiosperms remains largely unexplored (but see Gómez and Verdú 2012;Lim et al, 2021).…”