title: A video-aided study of the diet of wild white-headed Langurs (Trachypithecus leucocephalus).
abstract: Asian leaf-eating monkeys have flexible, environmentally adaptable feeding strategies. The diet and food choices of white-headed langurs (Trachypithecus leucocephalus) have, however, not yet been studied in the Nongguan Karst Hills in China, where one of the two main surviving populations of this endangered species lives. From 2000 to 2002 inclusive, we adopted an innovative video playback analysis method to identify the food species used by the langurs and to calculate the corresponding feeding frequency for each species. The video-aided methodology was shown to be efficient. It provided high-quality images, and the plant species could be identified in 98.3% of the feeding records. Based on this analysis, we found that the langurs in Nongguan fed on 70 species of plants, among which 24 were identified as their staple food species. The cumulative curve for the staple food species reached a plateau at 255 (43.7%) feeding records. This result indicated that most of the langurs' staple food species had been identified by the analysis.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Nature and Society, School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Lijie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Qing
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Dagong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Qin
authors.forename: Xingdong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Dezhi
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Tong
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.forename: Mei
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Wenshi
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Pan
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D002681:China; D016673:Colobinae / Q000502:physiology*; D004032:Diet; D056727:Endangered Species; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005518:Food Preferences; D014743:Videotape Recording / Q000379:methods*