Locomotor flexibility in L epilemur explained by habitat and biomechanics

Abstract

There are at present few comparable studies of lemur locomotion in the wild. This has unfortunately meant we have little knowledge about locomotor variation, and hence flexibility, with regard to differences in support availability and habitat structure. Here we compare the locomotion of Lepilemur edwardsi at Ankarafantsika with that of Lepilemur ruficaudatus at Kirindy-Mitea National Park. While data were collected by two individuals, at different times, both studies used the same data collection protocol and are hence highly comparable. Locomotor mode, support diameter and orientation, heights, and distances traveled were all collected. We find that locomotor specialization, in this case for vertical leaping, has ensured that some support requirements are independent of habitat. For example, both species used vertical supports most often. However, overall support diameter does indicate a certain degree of flexibility, whereby L. ruficaudatus most often used supports ≤5 cm in diameter and L. edwardsi >5 cm in diameter.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 51 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.