The availability of fruits in the Amazon floodplain forests is seasonal what demand from frugivorous adaptive strategies to ensure their survival in periods of fruit scarcity. In this scenario we evaluated the diet, activity patterns and the use of space by Saimiri macrodon during periods of higher (aquatic phase) and lower (terrestrial phase) fruit availability in the várzea forest of Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, Brazil. Social units were followed and the behavior of the animals was recorded through scan sampling method within two minutes between eight-minute intervals. Saimiri macrodon presented faunivorous-frugivorous diet, and arthropods were important in the diet during both ecosystem phases (59.5% of the records; N = 899), despite the highest consumption during the terrestrial phase (t = 3.40, df = 41; p = 0.001). In the aquatic phase, S. macrodon consumed an average of 29 fruits more than in the terrestrial phase. Fruits of Ficus species were the most consumed in both phases, demonstrating the relevance of this genus to S. macrodon, especially during the period of greater fruit scarcity. The general activity budget followed the common pattern of squirrel monkeys, with the predominance of travelling (56%) and feeding (23%), and the rest of the records distributed among social interactions (6%) resting (< 1,0%) and others (7,5%). Among the activities, social interactions, resting and food were the only ones that showed a significant difference between the phases, having been both more frequent during the aquatic phase, in which fruit availability is higher. In both phases, S. macrodon occupied the low várzea more often and fed mainly on medium (55.8%) and high (35.8%) forest vertical strata. The results are similar to other studies on squirrel monkeys, which indicate typical genus behavior patterns though, S. macrodon, different of the expected, has used mostly the medium and high strata of the canopy.
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