Animal Diversity Web

Ge­o­graphic Range

There are three rec­og­nized sub­species of mus­tached tamarins: Sagui­nus mys­tax mys­tax, Sagui­nus mys­tax pilea­tus, and Sagui­nus mys­tax pluto. All three sub­species are found in the mid­dle Ama­zon re­gion of north­ern Peru and west­ern Brazil. (Flea­gle, 1999)

• Biogeographic Regions
• neotropical
  • native

Habi­tat

Mus­tached tamarins pre­fer dry, up­land forests in the Ama­zon­ian low­land and avoid flooded forests. (Flea­gle, 1999)

• Habitat Regions
• tropical
• terrestrial

• Terrestrial Biomes
• rainforest

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Mus­tached tamarins, being cal­litrichines, have dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures that set them apart from other New World mon­keys. These in­clude their diminu­tive body size and the pres­ence of claw-like nails on all dig­its ex­cept the hal­lux. Mus­tached tamarins have also lost both their upper and lower 3rd mo­lars and the hypocones on their upper mo­lars. The den­tal for­mula is 2.​1.​3.​2 / 2.​1.​3.​2. Tamarins have spat­u­late in­cisors that are shorter than their ca­nines, un­like mar­mosets which have in­cisors and ca­nines of more sim­i­lar size. The labial and lin­gual sides of their in­cisors are also thick­ened with enamel. Mus­tached tamarins have jet black pelage on their body and tail and a char­ac­ter­is­tic white stripe on their upper lip, which gives the ap­pear­ance of a "white mus­tache." Mus­tached tamarins do not have pre­hen­sile tails. (Suss­man and Kinzey, 1984)

Mus­tached tamarins do not ex­hibit sex­ual di­mor­phism and there are only minor dif­fer­ences in body and ca­nine size be­tween males and fe­males. On av­er­age, adult male mus­tached tamarins weigh 491 ± 23.0 g and mea­sure 61.2 ± 31.2 cm (n=95), whereas adult fe­males weigh 511.0 ± 49.0 g and mea­sure 62.0 ± 29.0 cm (n=80). (Gar­ber and Teaford, 1986; Ry­lands and Mit­ter­meier, 2008)

Ac­cord­ing to Cesar and Bicca-Mar­ques (1999), feed­ing be­hav­iors are cor­re­lated with the rel­a­tive size and shape of hands in cal­litrichines. Mixed-species groups of tamarins are ob­served to form only be­tween species that have dif­fer­ent for­ag­ing be­hav­ior, which re­duces di­rect com­pe­ti­tion. Con­se­quently, due to the spe­cial­iza­tion con­ferred by hand mor­phol­ogy, species with dis­sim­i­lar hand shapes are usu­ally found in as­so­ci­a­tion with each other in such mixed-species groups. This is the case in the mixed-species groups of mus­tached tamarins and sad­dle-back tamarins. Sagui­nus mys­tax cap­tures ex­posed in­sects on branches and thus has evolved rel­a­tively wide and short hands, as op­posed to sad­dle-back tamarins, which have made use of longer and more slen­der ap­pendages to ma­nip­u­late open­ings in tree trunks and other sub­strates to search for in­sect prey. (Cesar and Bicca-Mar­ques, 1999)

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• homoiothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• sexes alike

• Range mass

  462 to 560 g

  16.28 to 19.74 oz

• Average mass

  501 g

  17.66 oz

• Range length

  30 to 92.4 cm

  11.81 to 36.38 in

• Average length

  61.6 cm

  24.25 in

Re­pro­duc­tion

Mus­tached tamarins usu­ally as­so­ci­ate in sta­ble troops, which vary widely in size. For ex­am­ple, the mean group size was found to be 6 to 7 in­di­vid­u­als per group in two stud­ies (Gar­ber et al., 1993; Löttker et al., 2004), with a range of 4 to 11 in­di­vid­u­als in each group. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993a; Löttker, et al., 2004)

The re­pro­duc­tive strat­egy of S. mys­tax is de­scribed as polyan­drous or polyg­y­nous. Each group is typ­i­cally cen­tered on one breed­ing fe­male, which is usu­ally also the old­est fe­male. De­spite the lack of breed­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, adult non-breed­ing fe­males may con­tinue to per­sist in the group, and may as­cend to breed­ing fe­male sta­tus in the event of death or ill­ness of the cur­rent breed­ing fe­male. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993a)

A study by Löttker et al (2007) sug­gests that breed­ing fe­males use so­cial groom­ing as in­cen­tive to in­duce adult males and non-breed­ing off­spring to stay in the group as helpers to care for their young. (Löttker, et al., 2007)

Adult mus­tached tamarins live in highly tol­er­ant and co­op­er­a­tive so­ci­eties. Gar­ber (1997) es­ti­mated that the fre­quency of co­op­er­a­tive to ag­gres­sive acts be­tween adult mus­tached tamarins was 52:1. In­tra­group sex­ual ag­gres­sion be­tween male mus­tached tamarins is ex­ceed­ingly rare, but mate guard­ing may be prac­ticed by the dom­i­nant breed­ing adult male dur­ing the breed­ing fe­male’s most fer­tile pe­ri­ods. (Gar­ber, 1997; Huck, et al., 2004)

Male mus­tached tamarins may com­pete for re­pro­duc­tive suc­cess via sperm com­pe­ti­tion and other phys­i­o­log­i­cal mech­a­nisms. For ex­am­ple, testes vol­ume in males within a group var­ied greatly among in­di­vid­u­als and this could di­rectly im­pact re­pro­duc­tive vi­a­bil­ity of males. (Gar­ber, et al., 1996)

De­spite a polyan­drous mat­ing sys­tem and seem­ingly a lack of ev­i­dence of strong com­pe­ti­tion or ag­gres­sion over breed­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, a ge­netic analy­sis of pa­ter­nity in mus­tached tamarins re­vealed that 67 to 100% of S. mys­tax in­fants in a troop were fa­thered by the same adult male. Ge­netic re­lat­ed­ness within a troop is high but both non-re­lated and re­lated adults can co-ex­ist in a troop. There is a need for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the crit­i­cal fac­tors that gov­ern the ob­served re­pro­duc­tive bias among adult S. mys­tax males. (Huck, et al., 2005)

• Mating System
• polyandrous
• polygynous
• polygynandrous (promiscuous)
• cooperative breeder

Mus­tached tamarins have char­ac­ter­is­tic twinned births, with an an­nual birth peak from No­vem­ber through March. Some S. mys­tax troops ex­pe­ri­ence 2 birthing cy­cles, from June to Oc­to­ber and in Feb­ru­ary and March. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993a)

Spa­tio-ge­netic analy­sis of a pop­u­la­tion of mus­tached tamarins in Peru by Huck et al. (2007) re­vealed vari­able ge­netic re­lat­ed­ness within a troop. Mi­gra­tion is com­mon among male and fe­male mus­tached tamarins, but fe­males are often re­quired to travel for longer dis­tances than males be­fore set­tling down with a new troop due to scarce breed­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in a polyan­drous mat­ing so­ci­ety. Mat­ings are gen­er­ally be­tween non-closely re­lated part­ners, hence the de­gree of in­breed­ing is re­duced. (Huck, et al., 2007)

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• seasonal breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• fertilization
• viviparous

• Breeding interval

  Mustached tamarin breeding intervals are not reported.

• Breeding season

  There is an annual birth peak from November through March. Some S. mystax troops experience 2 birthing cycles, from June to October and in February and March.

• Average number of offspring

  2

• Average number of offspring

  2

  AnAge

• Average gestation period

  145 days

• Average gestation period

  145 days

  AnAge

• Average weaning age

  171 days

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)

  486 days

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (female)
  Sex: female

  486 days

  AnAge

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)

  540 days

• Average age at sexual or reproductive maturity (male)
  Sex: male

  540 days

  AnAge

Ma­ter­nal in­fan­ti­cide, while rare, has been doc­u­mented twice in Sagui­nus species, in S. mys­tax by Culot et al. (2011) and S. fus­ci­col­lis by Her­rera et al. (2000). In both cases, in­fan­ti­cides oc­curred under cir­cum­stances of low avail­abil­ity of helpers (2 to 3 male helpers com­pared to 4 to 5 helpers at other times) and pres­ence of more than 1 breed­ing fe­male in the troop. Both of these fac­tors lower the like­li­hood of ob­tain­ing suf­fi­cient care for the in­fant within the group.

The sin­gle most im­por­tant de­ter­mi­nant of ma­ter­nal in­fan­ti­cide could be the mother’s per­cep­tion of low prob­a­bil­ity of sur­vival of her in­fant in the group, which is di­rectly caused by ex­ter­nal fac­tors in the troops, such as low helper avail­abil­ity. Low helper avail­abil­ity or com­pe­ti­tion for care with in­fants from an­other breed­ing fe­male in the same troop greatly re­duces the chances of sur­vival for in­fant mus­tached tamarins. Ma­ter­nal in­fan­ti­cide may thus rep­re­sent a strat­egy to max­i­mize ef­forts that go into en­sur­ing sur­vival of in­fants. On the con­trary, in­fan­ti­cide of un­re­lated in­fant tamarins by male mus­tached tamarins, which is usu­ally at­trib­uted to sex­ual se­lec­tion pres­sures, has never been ob­served in Sagui­nus. Males do not gain re­pro­duc­tive ad­van­tages from in­fan­ti­cide, as in­fant mor­tal­ity has min­i­mum ef­fect on the mother’s fer­til­ity sta­tus. Fe­male mus­tached tamarins re­main re­pro­duc­tively vi­able dur­ing nurs­ing of their young. (Culot, et al., 2011; Her­rera, et al., 2000)

Due to the co­op­er­a­tive breed­ing be­hav­ior of S. mys­tax, the num­ber of helpers avail­able in a group to care for the young has a strong in­flu­ence on the sur­vival of in­fant tamarins (Gar­ber, 1997). (Gar­ber, 1997)

Birth in­ter­vals were also shorter dur­ing the pe­ri­ods when in­fan­ti­cide oc­curred (1 to 2.5 months). In Sagui­nus fus­ci­col­lis, which also prac­tices co­op­er­a­tive breed­ing like S. mys­tax, the op­ti­mal birth spac­ing is 3 months, so as to allow for ef­fi­cient care of the young. Shorter birth in­ter­vals in­crease the bur­den on the troop to care for the young, and this ef­fec­tively re­duces the like­li­hood of pro­vid­ing ad­e­quate care for all of them. (Goldizen, 1989)

Al­though not demon­strated in S. mys­tax, care and trans­port of in­fants re­sults in sig­nif­i­cant per­sonal costs for small-sized mus­tached tamarins. Loss of body mass of car­ri­ers of in­fants has been demon­strated in wild and cap­tive Sagui­nus oedi­pus. Co­op­er­a­tive breed­ing al­lows the costs of car­ing for the young to be dis­trib­uted to other mem­bers of a troop to a cer­tain ex­tent, and car­riage of in­fant mus­tached tamarins is not re­stricted to cer­tain mem­bers of a troop, as mem­bers usu­ally take turns in trans­port­ing the young when for­ag­ing. (Achen­bach and Snow­don, 2002; Sanchez, et al., 2005; Sanchez, et al., 2008)

• Parental Investment
• precocial
• male parental care
• female parental care
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • female
  • protecting
    • female
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• post-independence association with parents

Lifes­pan/Longevity

There are in­con­clu­sive data on the longest lifes­pan of mus­tached tamarins in the wild, though in­di­vid­u­als in cap­tiv­ity have been known to live in ex­cess of 20 years. (Weigl, 2005)

• Typical lifespan
  Status: captivity

  >20 (high) years

Be­hav­ior

Mus­tached tamarins are so­cial and di­ur­nal an­i­mals and usu­ally co-ex­ist in sta­ble groups char­ac­ter­ized by in­fre­quent con­flicts and rel­a­tively low oc­cur­rence of sex­ual in­ter­ac­tions within the group. (Hey­mann, 1996)

Being ar­bo­real, mus­tached tamarins usu­ally oc­cupy the mid­dle and upper lay­ers of the for­est at a height of 10 m above the ground. This is in con­trast to their con­gener, sad­dle-back tamarins, which oc­cupy the lower lay­ers of the for­est. (Buchanan-Smith, et al., 2000; Ry­lands and Mit­ter­meier, 2008)

Ag­gres­sive in­ter­group en­coun­ters be­tween mus­tached tamarin groups re­sult pri­mar­ily from re­source and mate de­fense and less from ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­putes. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993b)

In­ter­est­ingly, it was ob­served that in mixed-species groups, the larger S. mys­tax mem­bers are more likely to gain ac­cess to dis­puted food re­sources over Sagui­nus fus­ci­col­lis mem­bers in the same troop. (Nor­conk, 1990)

Con­flicts be­tween neigh­bor­ing troops of mus­tached tamarins fre­quently occur over food re­sources and es­pe­cially near im­por­tant feed­ing trees. The loss of such feed­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties will re­sult in extra for­ag­ing ef­forts by the dis­placed troop. Ac­cord­ing to Gar­ber (1988b, p. 27-28), "in those in­stances in which the troop was ex­cluded from using these nearby feed­ing sites, mean dis­tance trav­eled to the next major feed­ing tree was 331 m. This is con­sid­er­ably greater than the dis­tance trav­eled to the next major feed­ing site (59.2 m) after a suc­cess­ful de­fense." Hence, mus­tached tamarins that are dis­placed from feed­ing by an­other troop will have to ex­pend more en­ergy to travel longer dis­tances to find an­other suit­able feed­ing site. (Gar­ber, 1988a)

The de­vel­op­ment of trichro­matic vi­sion in pri­mates has been pro­posed as an adap­ta­tion to allow bet­ter de­tec­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of fruits in their forested habi­tats. New World mon­keys, such as Sagui­nus, are unique in hav­ing a poly­mor­phic vi­sion sys­tem. Only het­erozy­gous fe­male mus­tached tamarins have trichro­matic vi­sion, with the rest re­tain­ing dichro­matic vi­sion. There is some ev­i­dence in the closely re­lated species Sagui­nus labi­a­tus that those with tri­chomatic vi­sion "were more ef­fi­cient at se­lect­ing ripe fruits than were dichro­mats" (Smith et al 2003, p.3159), but this has not been in­de­pen­dently demon­strated in S. mys­tax. (Smith, et al., 2003a)

Ac­cord­ing to a study by Smith et al. (2003b), mixed-species troops of mus­tached and sad­dle-back tamarins were usu­ally led by a mus­tached tamarin dur­ing mi­gra­tion through its home range. Color vi­sion sta­tus did not con­sis­tently in­flu­ence the choice of the lead an­i­mal of a troop. How­ever, it was ob­served that a trichro­matic fe­male was sig­nif­i­cantly more likely to lead when the troop was ap­proach­ing a fruit­ing tree. This lends sup­port to the hy­poth­e­sis that trichro­mats are more en­dowed to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween fruit­ing and non-fruit­ing trees, and thus would be able to iden­tify fruit­ing trees that are ready for feed­ing. Color vi­sion is likely to be just one of many fac­tors af­fect­ing lead­er­ship se­lec­tion in wild S. mys­tax and S. fus­ci­col­lis troops. (Smith, et al., 2003b)

Vig­i­lance, de­fined as "ob­serv­able head move­ments in sta­tion­ary an­i­mals where scan­ning is di­rected be­yond arm's reach" (Sto­jan-Dolar and Hey­mann, 2010b, p. 327), ap­pears to serve the pri­mary func­tion of preda­tor de­tec­tion and avoid­ance in S. mys­tax. Sec­on­dar­ily, vig­i­lance has also been pro­posed to main­tain group co­he­sion within one’s own group and to mon­i­tor the move­ment of neigh­bor­ing troops. Group com­po­si­tion and size af­fect the vig­i­lance of mus­tached tamarins. In­di­vid­u­als in mixed-species groups ap­peared to be less vig­i­lant when feed­ing and dur­ing pe­ri­ods of rest­ing than those not in mixed-species groups. Sagui­nus mys­tax mem­bers in mixed-species groups also ex­hib­ited a greater re­duc­tion in ver­ti­cal vig­i­lance, com­pared to that in the hor­i­zon­tal di­rec­tion. One rea­son may be the po­si­tional pref­er­ences of Sagui­nus mys­tax and S. fus­ci­col­lis, which oc­cupy dif­fer­ent for­est strata. Tamarins in mixed-species groups may share re­spon­si­bil­ity for group vig­i­lance in the ver­ti­cal di­rec­tion; hence, greater re­duc­tion in ver­ti­cal scan­ning is ob­served. De­vel­op­ment of mixed-species groups pro­vides some evo­lu­tion­ary ad­van­tage in en­hanc­ing preda­tor de­tec­tion and avoid­ance for the troop so as to in­crease the chances of over­all sur­vival of its S. mys­tax and S. fus­ci­col­lis mem­bers. (Sto­jan-Dolar and Hey­mann, 2010a; Sto­jan-Dolar and Hey­mann, 2010b)

Sym­met­ri­cal quadrupedal­ism is the dom­i­nant type of lo­co­mo­tion in S. mys­tax (63%), fol­lowed by asym­met­ric quadrupedal­ism (23%) and leap­ing (14%). Mus­tached tamarins also pref­er­en­tially use more hor­i­zon­tal sup­ports when trav­el­ing, and thin and flex­i­ble sup­port­ing struc­tures when feed­ing. (Nyakatura and Hey­mann, 2010)

The move­ment of S. mys­tax has been de­scribed by Suss­man and Kinzey (1984, p. 427) as “quadrupedal, run­ning, and leap­ing along medium to small branches and jump­ing among the fine ter­mi­nal branches and leaves be­tween trees.” (Suss­man and Kinzey, 1984)

Al­though other pri­mates do form sym­patric groups, the mixed-species groups of tamarins are among the most sta­ble and per­ma­nent of all pri­mate groups. Group co­he­sion is im­por­tant in main­tain­ing mixed-species groups, and this can be en­hanced by in­tra-group com­mu­ni­ca­tion and shared re­spon­si­bil­ity in preda­tor de­fense and avoid­ance. As tamarin species in mixed-species groups may com­pete for sim­i­lar re­sources, spa­tial seg­re­ga­tion be­tween species is im­por­tant in al­low­ing such mixed-species groups to per­sist. (Nad­jafzadeh and Hey­mann, 2008)

By dif­fer­ing in lo­co­mo­tor types, sup­port pref­er­ence, and food/prey se­lec­tion, and by oc­cu­py­ing dif­fer­ent strata of their for­est habi­tat, mus­tached tamarins and sad­dle-back tamarins are able to co-ex­ist har­mo­niously in groups with­out com­pet­ing for the same scarce re­sources. (Nor­conk, 1990)

• Key Behaviors
• arboreal
• diurnal
• motile
• sedentary
• territorial
• social

Home Range

The home range of mus­tached tamarins is highly vari­able, and sev­eral troops may co-ex­ist with over­lap­ping ter­ri­to­r­ial lim­its. A study of mus­tached tamarins in­hab­it­ing Padre Isla (in the Ama­zon Basin) showed that home ranges of neigh­bor­ing S. mys­tax groups over­lapped by ap­prox­i­mately 38%. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993b)

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Al­logroom­ing and scent mark­ing have been stud­ied in S. mys­tax so­ci­eties. Al­logroom­ing or so­cial groom­ing is com­monly ob­served in mus­tached tamarins, but it is not prac­ticed equally by all mem­bers of a troop. In one study by Hey­mann (1996), an adult male con­tributed 70% of all groom­ing ob­served in a group, with­out bias to any one of the other mem­bers in his troop. The rea­sons for this asym­me­try are not well-char­ac­ter­ized but may be at­trib­uted to dif­fer­ences in so­cial stand­ing or com­pe­ti­tion for re­pro­duc­tive suc­cess. As men­tioned above, breed­ing fe­males may em­ploy so­cial groom­ing as a way of en­cour­ag­ing other mem­bers in her troop to stay to as­sist in parental care du­ties. (Hey­mann, 1996; Löttker, et al., 2007)

The use of scent mark­ing for ter­ri­to­r­ial de­mar­ca­tion is vari­able among Sagui­nus species. In both wild and cap­tive S. mys­tax, there is lit­tle ev­i­dence for the use of scent mark­ing in ter­ri­to­r­ial de­fense. (Hey­mann, 2000)

Scent mark­ing func­tions promi­nently in in­tra-group com­mu­ni­ca­tion and fe­male mus­tached tamarins are more likely to en­gage in scent mark­ing be­hav­ior, com­pared to males. On the con­trary, male mus­tached tamarins are more likely to re­spond to scent marks of the op­po­site sex, which may be re­lated to mate se­lec­tion. Mus­tached tamarins do not en­gage in "col­lec­tive scent mark­ing" or al­lo­mark­ing, un­like in S. fus­ci­col­lis. (Hey­mann, 2001)

The rates of scent mark­ing by mus­tached tamarins are di­rectly pro­por­tional to the du­ra­tion of oc­cu­pa­tion of areas by the troop. In­tense scent mark­ing in more fre­quented areas en­hances the ef­fec­tive­ness of ol­fac­tory com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween mem­bers of the same troop. (Hey­mann, 1998)

Vo­cal­iza­tion has also been demon­strated to be a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in S. mys­tax, such as in sit­u­a­tions where a mus­tached tamarin be­comes sep­a­rated from its troop. Ac­cord­ing to Snow­don and Hodun (1985, p. 211), "The long-call struc­ture of the mous­tached tamarin is sim­i­lar to that of its sym­patric tamarin species, sad­dle­back tamarins. In both species the calls last 2 to 3 sec­onds, con­sist of sev­eral short, fre­quency-mod­u­lated syl­la­bles, and has a fre­quency range of 8 to 12 kHz". The same study also noted that "non­breed­ing adult fe­males gave fewer calls" and they were also slower to make the first long call upon sep­a­ra­tion. This could re­flect "the rel­a­tively low sta­tus of non­re­pro­duc­tive ma­ture fe­males" (p. 211) in their troop, which is usu­ally cen­tered on a sin­gle breed­ing fe­male. Mem­bers of a troop are able to rec­og­nize mem­bers of their troops by re­spond­ing to long calls from sep­a­rated mem­bers. This abil­ity to dis­tin­guish in­di­vid­ual mem­bers sug­gests that a S. mys­tax troop in the wild is able to main­tain its in­tegrity by en­sur­ing that all mem­bers are ac­counted for. (Snow­don and Hodun, 1985)

Early morn­ing vo­cal­iza­tions and sub­se­quent co­or­di­nated move­ment pat­terns within mixed-species troops of mus­tached tamarins and sad­dle-back tamarins are also cru­cial in main­tain­ing group in­tegrity on a daily basis. (Nor­conk, 1990)

• Communication Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

• Other Communication Modes
• scent marks

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Being fru­giv­o­rous-in­sec­tiv­o­rous, mus­tached tamarins feed on fruits, flow­ers, and nec­tar, in­sects, and plant ex­u­dates. Food sources like gums and soil ap­pear to sup­ple­ment nu­tri­ents and min­er­als lack­ing in their main diet of fruits and in­sects. (Hey­mann and Hart­mann, 1991; Hey­mann, et al., 2000)

Mus­tached tamarins typ­i­cally only feed on a small num­ber of plant species in their home range. How­ever, feed­ing trees are nu­mer­ous and scat­tered through­out their home range. Feed­ing trees are usu­ally con­tin­u­ously fruit­ing and pro­duce a small amount of fruits daily, hence mus­tached tamarins may visit the same trees reg­u­larly over a span of sev­eral months to ex­ploit the re­sources. (Gar­ber, et al., 1993b)

In a group of mus­tached tamarins in north­east­ern Peru, up to a third of feed­ing time was spent feed­ing on nec­tar from Sym­pho­nia glob­u­lif­era in the dry sea­son. Mus­tached tamarins con­cen­trated their for­ag­ing ef­forts on trees that yielded more nec­tar, de­spite hav­ing to travel greater dis­tances be­tween feed­ing ses­sions in some cases. There­fore, prox­im­ity of feed­ing trees from one an­other did not pre­dict for­ag­ing pat­terns, as mus­tached tamarins pref­er­en­tially chose feed­ing trees that al­lowed them to feed for longer pe­ri­ods of time in­stead of trees that were closer and would thus min­i­mize trav­el­ing time from one tree to an­other. (Gar­ber, 1988b; Gar­ber, 1989)

Al­though feed­ing trees are typ­i­cally scat­tered through­out their home range, mus­tached tamarins are able to re­mem­ber the lo­ca­tions of the im­por­tant feed­ing trees to min­i­mize ef­forts in for­ag­ing. The use of spa­tial mem­ory and learn­ing in for­ag­ing are im­por­tant be­cause they pro­vide "an ef­fi­cient means of ex­ploit­ing a widely scat­tered set of pre­dictable feed­ing sites" (Gar­ber, 1989, p. 212). (Gar­ber, 1989)

Gum feed­ing is highly sea­sonal, but it is a major di­etary sta­ple dur­ing dry and early wet sea­sons when other food sources are scarce. Fur­ther­more, gum ex­u­dates bal­ance min­eral in­take, which will oth­er­wise suf­fer from the ef­fects of a low-cal­cium and high-phos­pho­rus in­sec­tiv­o­rous diet. (Suss­man and Kinzey, 1984)

Since mus­tached tamarins lack the den­tal spe­cial­iza­tion to gouge holes into tree bark, gum feed­ing is "de­pen­dent prin­ci­pally on ei­ther nat­ural weath­er­ing of the bark or on the par­a­sitic ac­tiv­ity of wood­bor­ing in­sects, or both" (Gar­ber, 1992, p. 471). (Gar­ber, 1992)

Hey­mann and Smith (1999) found that Sagui­nus mys­tax con­cen­trated gum feed­ing in the af­ter­noon. They hy­poth­e­sized that this may be "a be­hav­ioral strat­egy to pro­long the time that the gums are re­tained in the gas­troin­testi­nal tract" (p. 468). Pro­longed pas­sage al­lows for bet­ter di­ges­tion and more com­plete mi­cro­bial fer­men­ta­tion of the sub­strates. This in turn yields nu­tri­tional ben­e­fits while pro­vid­ing these small an­i­mals with a means to gen­er­ate heat dur­ing the night via the fer­men­ta­tion process. (Hey­mann and Smith, 1999)

Gar­ber (1992) de­scribed mus­tached tamarins as ex­hibit­ing "a highly op­por­tunis­tic for­ag­ing pat­tern," with "sea­sonal ex­u­date feed­ing, oc­ca­sional trunk for­ag­ing pat­terns, and small-branch fruit and in­sect feed­ing" (p. 471). (Gar­ber, 1992)

The main ver­te­brate prey for mus­tached tamarins in­cludes "katy­dids (Tet­tigo­ni­idae, Or­thoptera), stick grasshop­pers (Pro­scopi­idae, Or­thoptera), and spi­ders (Aranei­dae), al­though lizards (Squa­mata) and frogs (Anura) were also taken" (Smith, 2000, p. 315). Mus­tached tamarins also feed on nestling birds, al­beit less fre­quently. They for­age for prey at higher lev­els within the for­est strata than Sagui­nus fus­ci­col­lis (av­er­age of 8.84 m vs. 1.50 m; Smith 2000), and also cap­ture most prey from slen­der and hor­i­zon­tal sub­strates. (Smith, 2000)

• Primary Diet
• omnivore

• Animal Foods
• birds
• amphibians
• reptiles
• insects

• Plant Foods
• fruit
• nectar
• flowers
• sap or other plant fluids

Pre­da­tion

Due to their small size, mus­tached tamarins are vul­ner­a­ble to pre­da­tion by a large num­ber of ter­res­trial preda­tors, such as tayras (Eira bar­bara), ocelots (Leop­ar­dus pardalis), and jaguarundis (Puma yagouaroundi). Large snakes like Boa con­stric­tor and birds of prey are also im­por­tant preda­tors. (Over­sluijs Vasquez and Hey­mann, 2001)

Co­op­er­a­tive de­fense against preda­tors was ob­served in a tribe of mus­tached tamarins in north­east­ern Peru. Mem­bers of this tribe suc­cess­fully res­cued a mus­tached tamarin that was being at­tacked by a Boa con­stric­tor by counter-at­tack­ing the preda­tor. The tribe sub­se­quently avoided low heights for a week after the at­tack, as fur­ther de­ter­rence to at­tacks by snakes. (Tello, et al., 2002)

In gen­eral, mus­tached tamarins counter preda­tors by avoid­ing at­tract­ing at­ten­tion. Mus­tached tamarins are cam­ou­flaged in densely fo­li­ated areas and they care­fully se­lect rest­ing and sleep­ing sites that have lower chances of being ex­posed. They may also choose rest­ing sites that are phys­i­cally iso­lated from sur­round­ing veg­e­ta­tion, as this would in­crease the like­li­hood of them being able to de­tect ap­proach­ing preda­tors. (Smith, et al., 2007)

• Anti-predator Adaptations
• aposematic
• cryptic

• Known Predators

  • tayras (Eira barbara)
  • ocelots (Leopardus pardalis)
  • jaguarundis (Puma yagouaroundi)
  • boa constrictors (Boa constrictor)

Ecosys­tem Roles

Mus­tached tamarins play an im­por­tant eco­log­i­cal role in their habi­tat by dis­pers­ing seeds of plant species in pri­mary and sec­ondary rain for­est, and thus in­di­rectly im­pact for­est re­gen­er­a­tion and main­te­nance. (Culot, et al., 2010)

As mus­tached tamarins are op­por­tunis­tic feed­ers and are able to ex­plore many kinds of plant re­sources, they are able to dis­perse a great va­ri­ety of seed species. (Her­rera, et al., 2003; Knogge and Hey­mann, 2003)

Due to their small size, there is a limit to the size of seeds that they can dis­perse. Sea­sonal changes in diet, sleep­ing and rest­ing pat­terns, and vari­a­tion in for­ag­ing be­hav­ior and mi­gra­tion may also af­fect their con­tri­bu­tion to seed dis­per­sal in the rain­for­est. (Muñoz Lazo, et al., 2011)

On a neg­a­tive note, mus­tached tamarins have been ob­served to be highly de­struc­tive in their nec­tar-feed­ing ac­tiv­i­ties but the wide­spread eco­log­i­cal im­pact of this has not been demon­strated. (Gar­ber, 1988b)

Mus­tached tamarins that for­aged near human set­tle­ments were found to have higher preva­lence of a pri­mate par­a­site, Pros­thenorchis el­e­gans. How­ever, in the same study by Wentz et al. (2010), mus­tached tamarins were not found to be in­fected by human par­a­sites even though they lived in close prox­im­ity to human com­mu­ni­ties with high rates of in­fes­ta­tion of ne­ma­todes such as As­caris lum­bri­coides and hook­worms. (Wenz, et al., 2010)

• Ecosystem Impact
• disperses seeds

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Sagui­nus mys­tax, like other tamarin species, has been used ex­ten­sively in bio­med­ical re­search, e.g., in the de­vel­op­ment of the he­pati­tis A vac­cine. (Ebert, et al., 1978)

• Positive Impacts
• research and education

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Al­though com­men­sally as­so­ci­ated with human com­mu­ni­ties, there is no ev­i­dence for ad­verse eco­nomic ef­fects on hu­mans.

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Mus­tached tamarins are on the least con­cern list of an­i­mals on The IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species (last as­sessed in 2008). Pop­u­la­tions of wild mus­tached tamarins have been noted to be sta­ble, al­though habi­tat de­struc­tion re­mains a threat to species liv­ing in the Ama­zon­ian rain­for­est. (Ry­lands and Mit­ter­meier, 2008)

The ef­fects of agri­cul­ture on S. mys­tax pop­u­la­tions in Peru have been stud­ied. Pop­u­la­tions re­cov­ered and even ex­ceeded pre-agri­cul­tural num­bers due to "in­creased re­pro­duc­tive rate, early breed­ing, and re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity", while "im­mi­gra­tion seemed to play a minor role" (Ramirez, 1984, p. 258). (Glan­der, et al., 1984; Ramirez, 1984)

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• IUCN Red List

  Least Concern
  More information

• US Federal List

  No special status

• CITES

  Appendix II

Other Com­ments

Ge­netic analy­sis sup­ports the di­vi­sion of tamarin taxa into small-bod­ied and large-bod­ied clades (Matauschek et al., 2011, p. 564), of which S. mys­tax is a mem­ber of the large-bod­ied clade. Mol­e­c­u­lar phy­lo­ge­netic ev­i­dence also sup­ports the “phyletic dwarfism” hy­poth­e­sis in Cal­litrichi­nae, which is "de­fined as a gra­di­ent in mor­pho­log­i­cal size par­tially cor­re­lated with evo­lu­tion­ary time" (Perel­man et al., 2011, p. 4). In this case, Sagui­nus is the first to di­verge, fol­lowed by the re­main­ing cal­litrichines in order of de­creas­ing body size. Within Sagui­nus, phy­lo­ge­netic analy­sis of mi­tochron­dr­ial DNA has demon­strated that Sagui­nus labi­a­tus is the clos­est rel­a­tive of S. mys­tax, with the two taxa di­verg­ing about 1.15 mya. (Matauschek, et al., 2011; Perel­man, et al., 2011; Tagliaro, et al., 2005)

Con­trib­u­tors

Jayne Lim (au­thor), Yale Uni­ver­sity, Eric Sar­gis (ed­i­tor), Yale Uni­ver­sity, Tanya Dewey (ed­i­tor), Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.

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