South American Primates: Comparative Perspectives in the Study of Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation

This will be the first time a volume will be compiled focusing on South American monkeys as models to address and test critical issues in the study of nonhuman primates. In addition, the volume will serve an important compliment to the book on Mesoamerican primates recently published in the series under the DIPR book series. The book will be of interest to a broad range of scientists in various disciplines, ranging from primatology, to animal behavior, animal ecology, conservation biology, veterinary science, animal husbandry, anthropology, and natural resource management. Moreover, although the volume will highlight South American primates, chapters will not simply review particular taxa or topics. Rather the focus of each chapter is to examine the nature and range of primate responses to changes in their ecological and social environments, and to use data on South American monkeys to address critical theoretical questions in the study of primate behavior, ecology, and conservation. Thus, we anticipate that the volume will be widely read by a broad range of students and researchers interested in prosimians, New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, humans, as well as animal behavior and tropical biology.

South America is home to perhaps the largest and most diversified radiation (some 200 species) of nonhuman primates on Earth. Given the conservation imperative associated with forest destruction and environmental change, and recent increases in the number of primate field studies, the editors of this volume have brought together a distinguished set of primatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, and conservation scientists to examine the nature and range of primate responses to changes in their ecological and social environments, and to use data on South American monkeys to develop models to address critical theoretical questions in the study of primate behavior, ecology, and conservation. Chapters in the volume focus on issues of taxonomy, biogeography and evolution, reproduction and fertility, mating systems, demography and life history traits, genetics and kinship, cognition, feeding adaptations, predation, rainforest ecology, the affects of forest fragmentation on ecosystem health and disease, the impact of human hunting on mammalian communities, and competing pressures for land use between the local human population and the remaining primate population.