TEMPORAL ACTIVITY AND BEHAVIOR OFDolichotis patagonumIN RELATION WITH FOOD CONSUMPTION IN THE NATIONAL PARK SIERRA DE LAS QUIJADAS

GATICA, AILIN; ANTONIO MANGIONE

San Luis

Jornada; Sociedad de Biologia de Cuyo; 2014

SBC y UNSL

el resumen todavia no esta publicado en Biocell. esta en prensa Animals need to balance their time between being vigilant to avoid predators, feeding and engaging in alternative activities. For this reason they have to overcome different trade-offs in order to gainenergy from food intake and attempt to limit the predation risk. The vigilance, feeding, walking and other (grooming, sniffing, etc.) behaviors were assessed for Mara (Dolichotis patagonum) in their natural environment. The behaviors were evaluated from 1071 photographs of maras taken by four cameras traps, in the winter season of 2013. We tested this behaviours by setting three different initial resource density of alfalfa pellets, in artificial food patches for ten days each density. Given that at higher resource availability the patch has greater marginal value of energy; we hypothesized that food intake as well as vigilance will increase with food supply. Greater consumption was observed at higher initial densities of food because the animals were longer in the patch, but no variation was observed in the frequency of the behaviors. During the trials,animals avoided periods of higher temperature, by eating in the afternoon and in the morning. Feeding events during nights, were observed a behavior not previously reported for this species. We could observe that when the animals had their partner close them, they had higher vigilance thantan when they were alone. Etological evaluations are highly recommended to understand the choices made by the species of interest during foraging.(EB). San Luis.