%0 Journal Article
%T Amount of Plant Foods Eaten and Sexual Differences in Feeding among Wild Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) of Kanyawara Community
%A Moses Chemurot
%A Gilbert Isabirye-Basuta
%A Eric Sande
%J ISRN Zoology
%D 2012
%R 10.5402/2012/120250
%X The amount of plant foods eaten and sexual differences in food intake among chimpanzees in Kibale Forest was investigated between July 2007 and January 2008. Continuous focal animal sampling was used to collect data on the diet, number, and duration of feeding bouts of 18 individuals of the Kanyawara chimpanzee community. Chimpanzees utilized 42 plant species for fruits, leaves, and piths. Among plant parts eaten, fruits contributed the greatest percentage of fresh weight (18) in the diets compared to leaves (5.1) and piths (3.6). The duration of feeding bouts varied, ranging from 1.5 to 45.8 minutes. When Mimusops bagshawei fruits were eaten, the numbers of feeding bouts per chimpanzee per day were high compared to when they were not. While our study agrees with previous studies that females spend more time feeding per day, it shows that the long feeding time among females does not translate to increased food weight. We suggest that the social role of females in taking care of the young and their attention being taken up by this role while feeding and fears associated with male presence is the reason for long feeding time among females. 1. Introduction Food availability varies both in time and space and there are reports of seasonal and dramatic interannual variations in the sources and quantities of food [1每4]. As a result, the diets of primate species are expected to change with food availability. The diet of wild chimpanzees is highly diverse and includes fruits, blossoms, barks of trees, leaves, and leaf buds. Although their diet includes many vegetables, they prefer fruit [5每10], and they supplement with a variety of insects, birds＊ eggs, birds [11], and small to medium-sized mammals [11每15]. Chimpanzee diet is more diverse when food is scarce. During this time stems, barks, underground storage organs and insects are eaten [11]. Consumption of Terrestrial Herbaceous Vegetation (THV) by the Kanyawara community chimpanzees increases as an alternative (fallback) resource when fruit is scarce [16]. Kanyawara chimpanzees preferentially consume arboreal drupes when available [17, 18]. When drupes are not available, figs are eaten in spite of their low sugar content compared with drupes [19]. Studies using feeding duration have shown that female chimpanzees spend more time feeding than males [20每22]. Although several studies on chimpanzee feeding ecology have been undertaken at different study sites: in Tanzania, [13], and Uganda [7, 9, 17, 23每25], no study has systematically estimated the weight of food eaten by wild chimpanzees or assessed the
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.zoology/2012/120250/