University of Sydney researchers have found monkeys living in the wild in cold snowy habitats adjust their nutrient intake to match the elevated costs of thermoregulation.
University of Sydney researchers have found monkeys living in the wild in cold snowy habitats adjust their nutrient intake to match the elevated costs of thermoregulation.
China’s Quinling mountains, high altitude temperate forests where winter temperatures commonly drop below 0 degrees Celsius and approximately 50 cm of snow covers the ground for several weeks in the winter, was the location of the study.
Published in Functional Ecology, the researchers analysed the nutritional content of all foods the monkeys consumed in order to calculate the nutrient composition of the monkeys’ diets, and then assessed the additional energy the monkeys used to regulate their temperature in winter compared with spring.
Professor David Raubenheimer, the University of Sydney’s Leonard P Ullmann Chair in Nutritional Ecology at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and Charles Perkins Centre, conducted the study’s nutritional modelling using nutritional geometry, a multidimensional framework that explores how animals balance the ingestion of multiple nutrients.
Read more at University of Sydney
Image: Monkeys in spring in China's Quinling mountains. (Credit: David Raubenheimer)
