Sponsor
Funding for this work was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG grant Ba 3966/1-1) and the National Science Foundation (NSF grant 1457369).
Published In
PLoS ONE
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2016
Subjects
Coevolution, Cyanogen compounds, Lemurs -- Madagascar, Animal-plant relationships -- Madagascar
Abstract
Feeding strategies of specialist herbivores often originate from the coevolutionary arms race of plant defenses and counter-adaptations of herbivores. The interaction between bamboo lemurs and cyanogenic bamboos on Madagascar represents a unique system to study diffuse coevolutionary processes between mammalian herbivores and plant defenses. Bamboo lemurs have different degrees of dietary specialization while bamboos show different levels of chemical defense. In this study, we found variation in cyanogenic potential (HCNp) and nutritive characteristics among five sympatric bamboo species in the Ranomafana area, southeastern Madagascar. The HCNp ranged from 209±72 μmol cyanide* g-1 dwt in Cathariostachys madagascariensis to no cyanide in Bambusa madagascariensis. Among three sympatric bamboo lemur species, the greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus) has the narrowest food range as it almost exclusively feeds on the highly cyanogenic C. madagascariensis. Our data suggest that high HCNp is the derived state in bamboos. The ancestral state of lemurs is most likely "generalist" while the ancestral state of bamboo lemurs was determined as equivocal. Nevertheless, as recent bamboo lemurs comprise several "facultative specialists" and only one "obligate specialist" adaptive radiation due to increased flexibility is likely. We propose that escaping a strict food plant specialization enabled facultative specialist bamboo lemurs to inhabit diverse geographical areas.
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0158935
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18434
Citation Details
Ballhorn DJ, Rakotoarivelo FP, Kautz S (2016) Coevolution of Cyanogenic Bamboos and Bamboo Lemurs on Madagascar. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0158935.
Description
© 2016 Ballhorn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.