Jörg U. Ganzhorn, Summer Arrigo-Nelson, Sue Boinski, An Bollen, Valentina Carrai, Abigail Derby, Giuseppe Donati, Andreas Koenig, Martin Kowalewski, Petra Lahann, Ivan Norscia, Sandra Y. Polowinsky, Christoph Schwitzer, Pablo R. Stevenson, Mauricio G. Talebi, Chia Tan, Erin R. Vogel, Patricia C. Wright

The ecological factors contributing to the evolution of tropical vertebrate communities are still poorly understood. Primate communities of the tropical Americas have fewer folivorous but more frugivorous genera than tropical regions of the Old World and especially many more frugivorous genera than Madagascar. Reasons for this phenomenon are largely unexplored. We developed the hypothesis that Neotropical fruits have higher protein concentrations than fruits from Madagascar and that the higher representation of frugivorous genera in the Neotropics is linked to high protein concentrations in fruits. Low fruit protein concentrations in Madagascar would restrict the evolution of frugivores in Malagasy communities.