Behavioural Thermoregulation in a Small Neotropical Primate

Carla Cristina Gestich · Christini B. Caselli · Eleonore Zulnara Freire Setz

41 citations0/0 files storedEthology

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Primate Behavior and Ecology Physiological and biochemical adaptations Thermoregulation and physiological responses

Abstract

Abstract The maintenance of body temperature in endothermic animals imposes considerable metabolic costs that vary with air temperature fluctuations. To minimise these costs, endotherms can adopt certain behaviours to adjust the pattern of heat transfer between their bodies and the environment. In this study, we evaluated whether a small Neotropical primate, the black‐fronted titi monkey (Callicebus nigrifrons), living in a seasonal environment can use behavioural mechanisms to cope with fluctuations in the air temperature. We monitored the air temperature and the titi monkeys’ behaviour over 1 yr. When the animals were inactive, we recorded the microhabitat used, the huddling between individuals and the body postures adopted. The monkeys primarily responded to air temperature fluctuations through microhabitat selection: they spent more time in sunny places and used higher strata of forest under lower temperatures. Moreover, they used sunny microhabitats during the first hour of their active period after colder nights. The monkeys did not huddle or change body postures in response to air temperature fluctuations. Huddling behaviour seemed to be primarily influenced by social interactions, and body postures were more energy conserving, regardless of temperature. Titi monkeys, however, used more energy‐conserving postures and huddling behaviour under cloudy conditions than sunny conditions, suggesting that these behaviours may be important when they are unable to thermoregulate by microhabitat selection. We concluded that fluctuations in air temperature can promote significant changes in the behaviour of titi monkeys and can impose important restrictions on mammals’ activities, even in tropical regions.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

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

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 41 citations exist upstream.

References

1974Observational Study of Behavior: Sampling Methods 1978Animal behavior. An evolutionary approach 2007Primates in Perspective 1986Current Perspectives in Primate Social Dynamics 2010When should we use one‐tailed hypothesis testing?2008Predation Risk and Antipredator Strategies 2002A taxonomic review of the titi monkeys, genus Callicebus Thomas, 1903, with the description of two new species, Callicebus bernhardi and Callicebus stephennashi, from Brazilian Amazonia 1998Behavioral thermoregulation in a sexually and developmentally dichromatic neotropical primate, the black-and-gold howling monkey (Alouatta caraya)

Explore the map →

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

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.