|Photo of black howler monkey by Ian Morton|
A team of scientists interested in monitoring the recovery carried out a study to see how this has affected the monkeys' parasites. It is possible that these primates are harbouring higher parasite loads than they did before the hurricane due to the stress of living in a disturbed habitat. The scientists collected samples of monkey fece over the course of 3 years and look for parasite eggs. They also measured the level of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress, present in the fecal sample, and collected data on other aspects of the monkey's behaviour to see if they were associated with their parasite burden.
|Photo of Controrchis eggs |
While black howler monkeys usually prefer a diet filled with fruit, in the aftermath of Hurricane Iris there were no fruit-bearing plants in the forest for 18 months. So the monkeys were forced to go on a leaf-based diet instead of the fruit-based one they enjoyed before the hurricane, and the plant most readily available and palatable to the monkeys was Cecropia. These fast-growing leafy plants usually happens to be the first on the scene in the wake of such habitat disturbances. They do not contain as much fibre as other plants and have little in the way of noxious defensive chemicals - which makes Cecropia excellent fodder for the black howler monkeys. Cecropia also contains a lot of what these monkeys need in a balanced diet, so in the absence of fruits, the howler monkeys munched readily on these nutritious greens
But why is the consumption of Cecropia associated with the prevalence of Controrchis? The fluke does not use leaves and vegetation as a mean of transmission (unlike Fasciola the liver fluke), instead, Controrchis uses ants as a go-between to get in their vertebrate host. But these monkeys don't really have a taste for ants, so why is Controrchis prevalence linked to the amount of leaves they have consumed? That is because Cecropia also happens to be myrmecophtyes, or ant-plants. Monkeys that are chowing down those leafy greens are also inadvertently swallowing a lot of ants, which means taking onboard a lot of Controrchis waiting to make a connection with a suitable monkey host.
For another more detailed take on this paper, from the lead author herself, see this post here.
Behie, A. M., Kutz, S., & Pavelka, M. S. (2014). Cascading Effects of Climate Change: Do Hurricane‐damaged Forests Increase Risk of Exposure to Parasites?. Biotropica 46: 25-31.