Comparative feeding ecology of mouse lemurs (Microcebus spp.) in northwestern Madagascar in view of species-specific biographic patterns

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The understanding of the factors that determine and influence the biogeography of species is of central importance in the field of biodiversity research. Madagascar is a recently gaining much attention in this respect, since this island is characterised by an unusually high proportion of endemic species, many but not all of which having very small distributions. The aim of this study is to investigate the explanatory potential of three macroecological hypotheses for the understanding of the divergent distribution patterns of lemurs, a taxonomic group of 100% endemics which are highly threatened by habitat destruction. Two partially sympatric mouse lemur species in northwestern Madagascar were chosen as model organisms. The hypotheses of interest are 1) the spectrum of used resources (i.e., feeding niche width and thereby the ecological plasticity) differs between species with divergent distributions, 2) ongoing interspecific competition for food may explain the divergent distributions, and/or 3) the species-specific dispersal pattern may explain the divergent distributions. Behavioural, ecological and experimental data have been collected in the field and will now be analysed and supplemented by chemical analyses on food resources, hairs and genetic data on free-living mouse lemur populations. Together with other analyses on datasets collected in my working group, this project will allow us to test all major ecological explanations for the divergent biogeographic patterns of our lemur models.