ScienceDaily
(Nov. 28, 2012) — When seasonal changes affect food availability,
omnivores like blue monkeys adapt by changing their diets, but such nutritional
changes may impact female reproduction, according to research published
November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Steffen Foerster
from Barnard College, and colleagues from Columbia University and the
Smithsonian Institution.
The
authors found that levels of fecal glucocorticoids (fGC), a stress marker,
increased when female monkeys shifted their diet towards lower quality fallback
foods, whereas the levels decreased when the monkeys had access to preferred
foods like insects, fruits and young leaves.
They
also found that lactating females and those in the later stages of pregnancy
showed greater increases in the stress marker than females who were not in
these stages of reproduction. According to the authors, their results suggest
that these seasonal changes in food availability may affect inter-birth
intervals in these primates, and also affect the timing of infant independence
from mothers.
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