Sex-specific usage patterns of sleeping sites in grey mouse lemurs (Microcebus murinus) in northwestern Madagascar

Abstract

Sleeping sites are a potentially important resource for grey mouse lemurs since they are confronted with high daily temperature fluctuations and a high predation pressure. In order to determine the existence and degree of resource competition, sleeping site characteristics, locations, and usage patterns as well as sleeping group compositions were investigated in a 3 month field study in a dry deciduous forest of northwestern Madagascar. The daily sleeping sites of females were on average better insulated and safer than those of males. Males used more sleeping sites and changed the site more often than females. During the whole study, males slept alone, whereas the females formed stable sleeping groups in on average 83.7% of the days. Sex-specific differences in usage patterns might be explained by intersexual resource competition and female dominance and could possibly be related to differential parental investment of the sexes. The underlying study indicates that sleeping sites may be a restricted and defendable resource for grey mouse lemurs. The investigation gives new insights into the distribution patterns and social organization of this species.

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 — 143 citations exist upstream.

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