Deciding Where to Sleep: Spatial Levels of Nesting Selection in Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) Living in Savanna at Iss
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Deciding Where to Sleep: Spatial Levels of Nesting Selection in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Living in Savanna at Issa, Tanzania R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar 1,2
& Trond
Reitan 2
Received: 18 October 2019 / Accepted: 21 October 2020 / Published online: 10 December 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract To understand how animals select resources we need to analyze selection at different spatial levels or scales in the habitat. We investigated which physical characteristics of trees (dimensions and structure, e.g., height, trunk diameter, number of branches) determined nesting selection by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) on two different spatial scales: individual nesting trees and nesting sites. We also examined whether individual tree selection explained the landscape pattern of nesting site selection. We compared the physical characteristics of actual (N = 132) and potential (N = 242) nesting trees in nesting sites (in 15 plots of 25 m × 25 m) and of all trees in actual and potential nesting sites (N = 763 in 30 plots of 25 m × 25 m). We collected data in May and June 2003 in Issa, a dry and open savanna habitat in Tanzania. Chimpanzees selected both the site they used for nesting in the landscape and the trees they used to build nests within a nesting site, demonstrating two levels of spatial selection in nesting. Site selection was stronger than individual tree selection. Tree height was the most important variable for both nesting site and tree selection in our study, suggesting that chimpanzees selected both safe sites and secure trees for sleeping. Keywords Antipredation . Chimpanzee beds . Chimpanzee nesting patterns . Comfort .
Nesting site selection . Nesting tree selection . Thermoregulation
Handling Editor: Joanna Setchell
* R. Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar r.a.hernandez–[email protected]
1
Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis, Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
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Introduction Sleep is one of the vital behaviors in animals and the one that involves the highest risk of predation, making the decision of where to sleep essential for survival (Fruth et al. 2018; Lima et al. 2005; Mainwaring et al. 2014; Reinhardt 2020). Primates show a great diversity of sleeping places. Strepsirrhines use tree branches, tree holes, tangles of vegetation, and nests constructed by other species or by themselves (Eppley et al. 2016; Gursky 2002; Kappeler 1998; Terrien et al. 2011). Old World and New World monkeys use tree branches, tree holes, tree forks, vegetation-covered tree trunks, dense tangles of vegetation, cliff ledges, or caves (Anderson 1984; Hamilton 1982). Small apes use bare tree branches and parasitic plants on branches to sleep (Fan and Jiang 2008). Great apes build beds, or complex structures of vegetation (called nests) for sleeping, mostly in trees, but chimpanzees (Pan tro
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