Golden-headed lion tamarin

The primate

Golden-headed lion tamarin is a primate in the family Callitrichidae (order Primates) — Leontopithecus chrysomelas.

Range and habitat

Its home range may be large in order to provide a sufficient amount of easily depletable fruit and prey foraging sites over the long term. On average it defended home ranges that are 123 hectares. Space is not necessarily used exclusively, and golden-headed lion tamarin groups may occupy areas that overlap to some extent at their borders The golden-headed lion tamarin, also the golden-headed tamarin, is a lion tamarin endemic to Brazil.

In 1980 the Brazilian government created the Una Biological Reserve for the protection of the golden-headed lion tamarin and its habitat. The protection plan included conservation activities on over 70% of the neighboring farms, educating farmers on how to use sustainable agriculture in order to preserve the tamarin's habitat.

Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.

Diet and breeding

Raboy and Dietz, who completed a study at Una Biological Reserve on diet and foraging patterns, observed that the golden-headed lion tamarin tends to defend a large home range relative to its small body size, (ranging from 40–320 hectares). It has a very wide diet. It eats plants, fruits, flowers, nectar, insects and small invertebrates; that include insect larvae, spiders, snails, frogs, lizards, bird eggs and small snakes.

It searches for animal prey within epiphytic bromeliads. If its home range does not contain many bromeliads, then it will also forage in crevices, holes in trees, between palm fronds and in leaf litter.

In crisis

It is found only in the lowland and premontane tropical forest fragments in the state of Bahia, and therefore is considered to be an endangered species. Several sources seem to have different information on the number of individuals within a group, and the type of social system that may be apparent. The golden-headed lion tamarin lives within group sizes ranging from 2 to 11 individuals, with the average size ranging from 4 to 7.

According to various sources, the group may consist of two adult males, one adult female, and any immature individuals, one male and one female and any immature individuals, or there may be one producing pair and a varying number of other group members, usually offspring from previous generations. The IUCN Red List categorized the golden-headed lion tamarin as endangered in 1982.

CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.

Golden-headed lion tamarin is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.

Sources

Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Golden-headed lion tamarin, Wikidata item Q775442. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.