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

了解决定和影响物种生物地理的因素在生物多样性研究领域具有核心重要性。马达加斯加最近在这方面得到了很多关注，因为该岛的特点是特有物种的比例异常高，其中许多但不是全部分布范围很小。狐猴是一种受生境破坏严重威胁的100%地方性分类类群，本研究旨在探讨三种宏观生态假说对狐猴不同分布模式的解释潜力。选择马达加斯加西北部两种部分同域的鼠狐猴作为模式生物。我们感兴趣的假设有：1)不同分布的物种之间使用资源的频谱（即食料生态位宽度和生态可塑性）不同；2)持续的种间食物竞争可能解释不同分布；和/或3)物种特有的扩散模式可能解释不同分布。在实地收集了行为、生态和实验数据，现在将对其进行分析，并辅以对自由生活的鼠狐猴种群的食物资源、毛发和遗传数据的化学分析。与我的工作小组收集的其他数据集分析一起，这个项目将使我们能够测试所有主要的生态解释，以解释我们狐猴模型的不同生物地理模式。

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.