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Web End = Primates (2017) 58:1317DOI 10.1007/s10329-016-0568-5
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What volume of seeds can a chimpanzee carry in its body?
Michio Nakamura1 Tetsuya Sakamaki2 Koichiro Zamma3
Received: 4 July 2016 / Accepted: 15 August 2016 / Published online: 23 September 2016 Japan Monkey Centre and Springer Japan 2016
Abstract Great apes are important seed dispersers with large bodies, able to swallow large seeds and travel long distances. Although there have been several studies investigating seed dispersal quality [sensu Schupp (Vegetatio 107/108:1529, 1993)] by chimpanzees, there is little information on the volume of seeds they can carry in their bodies. When a relatively fresh corpse of a mature female chimpanzee was found at Mahale, Tanzania, we took advantage of the rare opportunity to investigate the total weight and cubic volume of seeds recovered from the corpse. The seeds contained in the corpse weighed 258.8 g (dry weight) and measured 489.4 cm3. The volume of seeds was 14.7 % of the previously reported capacity of the digestive tract of a chimpanzee in captivity. We also indirectly estimated the volume of seeds from the values of observed seed volume in feces, the reported number of defecations per day, and the seed passage time. The estimated volume was signicantly lower than the observed seed volume, suggesting that the number of defecations per day is underestimated because it may not include nighttime defecation.
Keywords Endozoochory Mahale Mountains National
Park Pan troglodytes Seed dispersal Seed volume
Introduction
Frugivorous primates are important seed dispersers in several tropical forests (reviewed in Chapman 1995), and great apes are no exception to this. For example, apes may be more important seed dispersers for some plant species than non-ape primates, elephants, or frugivorous birds (Haurez et al. 2015). Sympatric cercopithecoid monkeys usually spit out seeds after processing them in their cheek pouches, whereas great apes typically swallow even large seeds and defecate them intact (Lambert 1999; Gross-Camp and Kaplin 2011). These two methods of seed dispersal may have different merits and functions. Cercopithecine monkeys disperse seeds via spitting, thus they do not fall very far from the parent tree. However, it is demonstrated that the removal of their adhesive pulp by teeth can result in high germination rates of these...