da Costa Renata Souza, Bicca-Marques Júlio César
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Faculdade de Biociências, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil.
PLoS One. 2014 Dec 17;9(12):e115188. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115188. eCollection 2014.
Foraging at night imposes different challenges from those faced during daylight, including the reliability of sensory cues. Owl monkeys (Aotus spp.) are ideal models among anthropoids to study the information used during foraging at low light levels because they are unique by having a nocturnal lifestyle. Six Aotus nigriceps and four A. infulatus individuals distributed into five enclosures were studied for testing their ability to rely on olfactory, visual, auditory, or spatial and quantitative information for locating food rewards and for evaluating the use of routes to navigate among five visually similar artificial feeding boxes mounted in each enclosure. During most experiments only a single box was baited with a food reward in each session. The baited box changed randomly throughout the experiment. In the spatial and quantitative information experiment there were two baited boxes varying in the amount of food provided. These baited boxes remained the same throughout the experiment. A total of 45 sessions (three sessions per night during 15 consecutive nights) per enclosure was conducted in each experiment. Only one female showed a performance suggestive of learning of the usefulness of sight to locate the food reward in the visual information experiment. Subjects showed a chance performance in the remaining experiments. All owl monkeys showed a preference for one box or a subset of boxes to inspect upon the beginning of each experimental session and consistently followed individual routes among feeding boxes.
夜间觅食面临着与白天不同的挑战，包括感官线索的可靠性。夜猴（Aotus spp.）是研究低光照水平觅食时所使用信息的理想灵长类动物模型，因为它们具有独特的夜行性生活方式。研究了分布在五个围栏中的六只黑顶夜猴（Aotus nigriceps）和四只缨冠夜猴（A. infulatus），以测试它们依靠嗅觉、视觉、听觉或空间及定量信息来定位食物奖励的能力，以及评估在每个围栏中安装的五个视觉上相似的人工喂食盒之间导航时路线的使用情况。在大多数实验中，每次实验只有一个盒子装有食物奖励。在整个实验过程中，装有诱饵的盒子随机变化。在空间和定量信息实验中，有两个装有诱饵的盒子，提供的食物量不同。在整个实验过程中，这些装有诱饵的盒子保持不变。每个围栏在每个实验中总共进行了45次实验（连续15个晚上，每晚三次）。在视觉信息实验中，只有一只雌性表现出学习利用视觉来定位食物奖励有用性的迹象。在其余实验中，受试动物表现出随机行为。所有夜猴在每次实验开始时都表现出对一个盒子或一组盒子的偏好，并始终沿着喂食盒之间的特定路线行动。
