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Tiny primates in Madagascar create accidental "gardens" with their shit, a new study says.
The red mouse gray lemurs, which live in matriarchal clans up to a dozen, tend to defecate near them, near tussocks of dry scrubland. In doing so, animals of the size of a chipmunk inadvertently sow the seeds of their favorite fruit plants.
"They certainly do not know that they do it," says co-author Fabien Genin's study of Nelson Mandela University. Benefits nonetheless: Family groups use these gardens as living spaces and nurseries, as well as food sources during the rainy season. (Read about how arctic foxes also grow their own "gardens".)
The matriarchs even defend the precious groves by hunting unfamiliar males, according to the study recently published in the Society's Journal of Biology linnéenne
Mismatched Plants
In the early 2000s, Genin noticed for the first time the unusual combination of fruiting plants by studying the greyish lemurs – one of 18 species of lemurs on the island –
. Mistletoe vines and drought-tolerant trees with thorny leaves with few similarities have always developed right next to each other. These groups of plants could not be predicted based on sunlight, soil type or nutrient availability; lemurs were the common denominator. All these plants produce nutritious fruits and berries in colors that appeal to the lemurs of the mouse.
Intrigued, Genin and the graduate student of the University of Fort Hare Hajarimanitra Rambeloarivony spent hundreds nights over a period of 12 years . the dry forests of the Berenty Reserve, following the lemurs and recording what they ate, where they slept, and with what other lemurs they interacted.
A lemur smiles on a plant in its "garden".
Photograph offered Hajarimanitra Rambeloarivony
Finally, Genin and Rambeloarivony identified four clans with garden territories. (See pictures of the tiniest animals on Earth, including some lemurs.)
Although gardens only bear fruit during the rainy season, they are at the heart of the society of gray mouse lemurs all over the world. 39; year. The males leave their groves, but the females inherit the gardens where they were born.
"They spend their whole lives in these gardens," says Genin. Much of this time is spent sleeping in the tree branches probably sown by other lemurs.
Lemur Children's Garden
The gardens also serve as "day care centers". Rather than taking babies on long, risky hikes, the mouse-gray lemurs leave their babies at home, under the watchful eyes of females.
When juveniles are ready to take their first steps in the world, they often take place in the shelter of gardens.
This arrangement probably also has benefits for plants. When scientists collected lemur faeces seeds and tested them on seeds cut directly from fresh fruit, they found that some garden species were more likely to sprout after crossing the digestive tract of a lemur. .
Digested seeds germinate more easily, but they suspect that digestion removes seed coatings or other chemicals that delay germination.
Ecosystem Engineers
Madagascar has only five native seed-dispersing birds, its 101 species of lemurs having the crucial burden of seed propagation and forest preservation. (See: "African trees can be linked to the fate of lemurs.")
Photographic traps reveal the lemur surprise
11 December 2012-National Geographic explorer makes a surprising nocturnal discovery of lemurs using traps Photographic. Lemur gardens are also an example of how animals can shape their own habitats without even realizing it, says Kim Valenta, an evolutionary ecologist at Duke University who did not participated in the study
. For a long time in the field, and you throw away your fruit waste, your food waste just outside your camp, you end up inadvertently planting a bunch of seeds of your favorite species [fruit] "says Valenta. 19659009] [19659002] As Rambeloarivony says, "lemurs are in fact like natural farmers."
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