Author Correction: Small Neotropical primates promote the natural regeneration of anthropogenically disturbed areas.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Small Neotropical primates promote the natural regeneration of anthropogenically disturbed areas.

Increasingly large proportions of tropical forests are anthropogenically disturbed. Where natural regeneration is possible at all, it requires the input of plant seeds through seed dispersal from the forest matrix. Zoochorous seed dispersal - the major seed dispersal mode for woody plants in tropical forests - is particularly important for natural regeneration. In this study, covering a period of more than 20 years, we show that small New World primates, the tamarins Saguinus mystax and Leontocebus nigrifrons, increase their use of an anthropogenically disturbed area over time and disperse seeds from primary forest tree species into this area. Through monitoring the fate of seeds and through parentage analyses of seedlings of the legume Parkia panurensis from the disturbed area and candidate parents from the primary forest matrix, we show that tamarin seed dispersal is effective and contributes to the natural regeneration of the disturbed area.

Forest type affects prey foraging of saddleback tamarins, Saguinus nigrifrons.

Callitrichids can persist in secondary forests where they may benefit from elevated prey abundance. However, how tamarins forage for prey in secondary forest compared to primary forest has not been examined. Using scan and focal sampling, we compared prey foraging and capture success of two groups of Saguinus nigrifrons in north-eastern Peru: one ranging in primary forest, the other with access to a 10-year-old anthropogenic secondary forest. There was a trend for more prey search in the secondary forest, but prey feeding, capture success and size were lower compared to the primary forest. Tamarins avoided the forest floor, used vertical supports less often and searched on a lower variety of substrates in the secondary forest. In the secondary forest, tamarins did not capture flushed prey, which make up a substantial part of the total prey captures biomass in primary forests. Reduced prey capture success is unlikely to reflect reduced prey availability, since more Orthoptera were found in secondary forest through ultrasonic surveys. Therefore, the prey search activity of S. nigrifrons in young secondary forests seemed rather opportunistic, presumably influenced by altered predation patterns, vegetation structure, as well as prey diversity.