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Behavior and Social Dynamics of Rhesus Macaques on Cayo Santiago

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Bones, Genetics, and Behavior of Rhesus Macaques

Abstract

Rhesus macaques are Asian primates with a current geographic distribution that encompasses many countries such as Afghanistan, India, Thailand, China, Pakistan, Bhutan, Burma, Nepal, Bangladesh, Laos, and Vietnam. They thrive in almost any type of habitat, including tropical forests, dry and semidesert regions, swamps, and mountains up to 4,000 m high. In some countries such as India, free-ranging rhesus macaques also live in highly populated urban areas including villages, towns, temples, and railway stations. Although rhesus macaques can be found in large numbers and, in many cases, are easily accessible for observations, studies of free-ranging rhesus macaques in Asia have mainly focused on population biology, demography, and geographic distribution and much less on behavior and ecology (e.g., Southwick and Siddiqi 1994).

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Acknowledgments

We thank all the staff of the Caribbean Primate Research Center for supporting our research on Cayo Santiago over the years. Our studies have been conducted in accordance with the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. Our research protocols have been approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, Medical Sciences Department, University of Puerto Rico. This publication was made possible by grant number CM-5-P40RR003640 from the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) to the Caribbean Primate Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of NCRR or NIH.

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Correspondence to Dario Maestripieri .

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Maestripieri, D., Hoffman, C.L. (2012). Behavior and Social Dynamics of Rhesus Macaques on Cayo Santiago. In: Wang, Q. (eds) Bones, Genetics, and Behavior of Rhesus Macaques. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1046-1_12

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