ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2014
A syndrome of mutualism reinforces the lifestyle of a sloth.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Mutualisms as a framework for multi-robot collaboration.Frontiers in robotics and AI · 2025Article
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- Exchange or Eliminate: The Secrets of Algal-Bacterial Relationships.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Differences in fungal communities in the fur of two- and three-toed sloths revealed by ITS metabarcoding.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- On the move: sloths and their epibionts as model mobile ecosystems.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Review
- Genome-wide transcriptome signatures of ant-farmedEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Visualizing the invisible: class excursions to ignite children's enthusiasm for microbes.Microbial biotechnology · 2020Article
- Tradeoffs in the evolution of plant farming by ants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Sloths host Anhanga virus-related phleboviruses across large distances in time and space.Transboundary and emerging diseases · 2020Article
- The demography of a resource specialist in the tropics: Cecropia trees and the fitness of three-toed sloths.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Bringing Community Ecology to Bear on the Issue of Antimicrobial Resistance.Frontiers in microbiology · 2019Review
- Can social partnerships influence the microbiome? Insights from ant farmers and their trophobiont mutualists.Molecular ecology · 2018Article
- Article
- Unpacking brown food-webs: Animal trophic identity reflects rampant microbivory.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- The assembly of ant-farmed gardens: mutualism specialization following host broadening.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Engineering Mycorrhizal Symbioses to Alter Plant Metabolism and Improve Crop Health.Frontiers in microbiology · 2017Review
- Forbidden phenotypes and the limits of evolution.Interface focus · 2015Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Arboreal herbivory is rare among mammals. The few species with this lifestyle possess unique adaptions to overcome size-related constraints on nutritional energetics. Sloths are folivores that spend most of their time resting or eating in the forest canopy. A three-toed sloth will, however, descend its tree weekly to defecate, which is risky, energetically costly and, until now, inexplicable. We hypothesized that this behaviour sustains an ecosystem in the fur of sloths, which confers cryptic nutritional benefits to sloths. We found that the more specialized three-toed sloths harboured more phoretic moths, greater concentrations of inorganic nitrogen and higher algal biomass than the generalist two-toed sloths. Moth density was positively related to inorganic nitrogen concentration and algal biomass in the fur. We discovered that sloths consumed algae from their fur, which was highly digestible and lipid-rich. By descending a tree to defecate, sloths transport moths to their oviposition sites in sloth dung, which facilitates moth colonization of sloth fur. Moths are portals for nutrients, increasing nitrogen levels in sloth fur, which fuels algal growth. Sloths consume these algae-gardens, presumably to augment their limited diet. These linked mutualisms between moths, sloths and algae appear to aid the sloth in overcoming a highly constrained lifestyle.
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