Plant secondary metabolites and primate food choices: A meta-analysis and future directions
Date
2022
Authors
Windley, Hannah
Starrs, Danswell
Stalenberg, Eleanor
Rothman, Jessica M
Ganzhorn, Joerg U
Foley, William
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley-Liss Inc
Abstract
The role of plant secondary metabolites (PSMs) in shaping the feeding decisions, habitat suitability, and reproductive success of herbivorous mammals has been a major theme in ecology for decades. Although primatologists were among the first to test these ideas, studies of PSMs in the feeding ecology of non-human primates have lagged in recent years, leading to a recent call for primatologists to reconnect with phytochemists to advance our understanding of the primate nutrition. To further this case, we present a formal meta-analysis of diet choice in response to PSMs based on field studies on wild primates. Our analysis of 155 measurements of primate feeding response to PSMs is drawn from 53 studies across 43 primate species which focussed primarily on the effect of three classes of PSMs tannins, phenolics, and alkaloids. We found a small but significant effect of PSMs on the diet choice of wild primates, which was largely driven by the finding that colobine primates showed a moderate aversion to condensed tannins. Conversely, there was no evidence that PSMs had a significant deterrent effect on food choices of non-colobine primates when all were combined into a single group. Furthermore, within the colobine primates, no other PSMs influenced feeding choices and we found no evidence that foregut anatomy significantly affected food choice with respect to PSMs. We suggest that methodological improvements related to experimental approaches and the adoption of new techniques including metabolomics are needed to advance our understanding of primate diet choice.
Description
Keywords
meta‐analysis, metabolomics, phylogeny, plant secondary metabolites, tannins
Citation
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Source
American Journal of Primatology
Type
Journal article
Book Title
Entity type
Access Statement
Open Access
License Rights
Creative Commons Attribution licence