South American Primates

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.