ArticleScientific reports2018
Quadratic relationships between group size and foraging efficiency in a herbivorous primate.
Article in Scientific reports, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Group social conditions and environment predict foraging behavior in wild baboons.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Thermal imaging demonstrates physiological responses to grooming interactions and audience effects in wild baboons.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Do food distribution and competitor density affect agonistic behaviour within and between clans in a high fission-fusion species?Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Ecological drivers of helminth infection patterns in the Virunga Massif mountain gorilla population.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2022Article
- Population dynamics of western gorillas at Mbeli Bai.PloS one · 2022Article
- Heterogeneity in patterns of helminth infections across populations of mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei).Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Dissecting the two mechanisms of scramble competition among the Virunga mountain gorillas.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2021Article
- Using long-term ranging patterns to assess within-group and between-group competition in wild mountain gorillas.BMC ecology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The effect of feeding competition on foraging efficiency is an important link between ecological factors and the social organization of gregarious species. We examined the effects of group size on daily travel distances, activity budgets, and energy intake of mountain gorillas in Rwanda. We measured daily travel distances of five groups, activity budgets of 79 gorillas in nine groups, and energy intake data for 23 adult females in three groups over a 16-month period. Travel distances and the proportion of time spent traveling increased with size for most groups, which would be expected if their foraging efficiency is limited by intragroup feeding competition. However, travel distances and times decreased for the largest group, which also had higher energy intake rates than intermediate sized groups. The improved foraging efficiency of the largest group may be explained by advantages in intergroup contest competition. The largest group had much lower home range overlap than the other study groups which may be due to groups avoiding one another as a result of male mating competition. Collectively, our results indicate that intermediate sized groups had the lowest foraging efficiency and provide a new twist on the growing evidence of non-linear relationships between group size and foraging efficiency in primates.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.