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Vegetal matter undergoing digestion in herbivores’ stomachs and intestines, digesta, can be an important source of dietary carbohydrates for human foragers. Digesta significantly increases large herbivores’ total caloric yield and broadens their nutritional profile to include three key macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) in amounts sufficient to sustain small foraging groups for multiple days without supplementation. Including this underappreciated resource in our foraging hypotheses and models can substantively change their predictions. In this talk, I explore the foraging implications of digesta in two contexts—sex-divided subsistence labor and archaeologically observed increases in plant use and sedentism—using estimates of available protein and carbohydrates in the native tissues and digesta, respectively, of a large ruminant herbivore (Bison bison).  

Raven Garvey, University of Michigan

The processes that drive reproductive isolation (RI) in cryptic species remain mysterious. Given that morphological and other phenotypic cues are usually fundamental to mate choice and successful reproduction in mammals, we wish to know why a species radiation might remain morphologically static (i.e., cryptic) while showing high levels of genetic and phylogenetic divergence. We are tackling this question by employing intensive field studies to examine behavioral, metabolic, genomic, and morphological characteristics in two species of cryptic mouse lemurs that occur sympatrically (and even syntopically) in Madagascar. Six months of intensive field investigation in both the reproductive and non-reproductive seasons indicate that the Microcebus murinus and M. griseorufus are partitioning their environment along multiple axes, including metabolic strategy. Ultimately, our study is one of the first to illuminate the RI continuum from genotype to phenotype in a cryptic primate radiation.

Jacinta Beehner, University of Michigan