TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lapuente, Juan
A1  - Arandjelovic, Mimi
A1  - Kühl, Hjalmar
A1  - Dieguez, Paula
A1  - Boesch, Christophe
A1  - Linsenmair, K. Eduard
T1  - Sustainable Peeling of Kapok Tree (Ceiba pentandra) Bark by the Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) of Comoé National Park, Ivory Coast
T2  - International Journal of Primatology
N2  - Primates often consume either bark or cambium (inner bark) as a fallback food tocomplete their diet during periods of food scarcity. Wild chimpanzees exhibit greatbehavioral diversity across Africa, as studies of new populations frequently reveal.Since 2014, we have been using a combination of camera traps and indirect signs tostudy the ecology and behavior of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in ComoéNational Park, Ivory Coast, to document and understand the behavioral adaptations thathelp them to survive in a savanna–forest mosaic landscape. We found that Comoéchimpanzees peel the bark of the buttresses of kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra) trees to eatthe cambium underneath. Individuals of all sex/age classes across at least six neigh-boring communities peeled the bark, but only during the late rainy season andbeginning of the dry season, when cambium may represent an important fallback food.Baboons (Papio anubis) also target the same trees but mainly eat the bark itself. Mostof the bark-peeling wounds onCeibatrees healed completely within 2 years, seeminglywithout any permanent damage. We recorded chimpanzees visiting trees in early stagesof wound recovery but leaving them unpeeled. Only 6% of peeled trees (N= 53) werereexploited after a year, suggesting that chimpanzees waited for the rest of the trees toregrow the bark fully before peeling them again, thus using them sustainably. Manyhuman groups of hunter-gatherers and herders exploited cambium sustainably in thepast. The observation that similar sustainable bark-peeling behavior evolved in bothchimpanzees and humans suggests that it has an important adaptive value in harshenvironments when other food sources become seasonally scarce, by avoiding thedepletion of the resource and keeping it available for periods of scarcity.
KW  - bark-peeling
KW  - ceiba pentandra
KW  - chimpanzee
KW  - Savanna–Forest mosaic
KW  - sustainable
Y1  - 2020
UR  - https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/23258
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-232581
SN  - 0164-0291
VL  - 41
ER  -