Skip to main content
WCS
Menu
Library
Library Catalog
eJournals & eBooks
WCS Research
Archives
Research Use
Finding Aids
Digital Collections
WCS History
WCS Research
Research Publications
Science Data
Services for WCS Researchers
Archives Shop
Bronx Zoo
Department of Tropical Research
Browse By Product
About Us
FAQs
Intern or Volunteer
Staff
Donate
Search WCS.org
Search
search
Popular Search Terms
WCS History
Library and Archives
Library and Archives Menu
Library
Archives
WCS Research
Archives Shop
About Us
Donate
en
fr
Title
Geometry of nutrition in field studies: an illustration using wild primates
Author(s)
Raubenheimer, D.;Machovsky-Capuska, G. E.;Chapman, C. A.;Rothman, J. M.
Published
2014
Publisher
Oecologia
Published Version DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3142-0
Abstract
Nutritional geometry has shown the benefits of viewing nutrition in a multidimensional context, in which foraging is viewed as a process of balancing the intake and use of multiple nutrients. New insights into nutrient regulation have been generated in studies performed in a laboratory context, where accurate measures of amounts (e.g. eaten, converted to body mass, excreted) can be made and analysed using amounts-based nutritional geometry. In most field situations, however, proportional compositions (e.g. of foods, diets, faeces) are the only measures readily available, and in some cases are more relevant to the problem at hand. For this reason, a complementary geometric method was recently introduced for analysing multi-dimensional data on proportional compositions in nutritional studies, called the right-angled mixture triangle (RMT). We use literature data from field studies of primates to demonstrate how the RMT can provide insight into a variety of important concepts in nutritional ecology. We first compare the compositions of foods, using as an example primate milks collected in both the wild and the laboratory. We next compare the diets of different species of primates from the same habitat and of the same species (mountain gorillas) from two distinct forests. Subsequently, we model the relationships between the composition of gorilla diets in these two habitats and the foods that comprise these diets, showing how such analyses can provide evidence for active nutrient-specific regulation in a field context. We provide a framework to relate concepts developed in laboratory studies with field-based studies of nutrition.
Keywords
Nutritional ecology;Nutritional geometry;Mixture triangles;Primates;Gorillas
Access Full Text
A full-text copy of this article may be available. Please email the
WCS Library
to request.
Back
PUB15309