Abstract
Primate life histories are marked by remarkably long prereproductive periods, particularly in atelins. Woolly monkeys have among the longest immature phases relative to their body size, but the behavior of woolly monkey juveniles and adolescents has until now been largely unknown. This chapter establishes guidelines for identifying developmental landmarks in immature woolly monkeys and presents data on a study of the behavioral development and life history of wild juvenile and adolescent lowland woolly monkeys (Lagothrix poeppigii) in Amazonian Ecuador. Despite overall low levels of sociality across all ages in this taxon, some sex-specific developmental patterns emerged. Male immatures preferentially interacted with adult male groupmates, presumably to gain access to important social resources. Female immatures appeared to increasingly distance themselves from groupmates up to dispersal, but showed a sharp increase in sexual interest in coresident adult males immediately prior to dispersing. Although data on adolescents are limited, this phase in particular appears to be a time of critical importance to woolly monkey life histories in both males and females, and may be of particular interest for future research.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Ecuadorian government—particularly officials of the Ministerio del Ambiente—for granting permission to work in the Yasuní region. Drs. David Romo and Kelly Swing of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito have provided invaluable and much-appreciated scientific and logistical support for our research at TBS. We also wish to thank the many volunteers, students, and colleagues who made this research possible by spending long hours in the forest following the monkeys and assisting with data collection, including Mia Marek, Ana Palma, Erin Fleming, Mauricio Guerra, Margaret Bryer, Ricardo Arango, Diego Mosquera, and “los tigres” of TBS. Financial support for this research was generously provided by the National Science Foundation (A.D., C.A.S.), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (A.D.), the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation (A.D.), New York University (A.D., C.A.S.), and the New York Consortium for Evolutionary Primatology (C.A.S.). The research described here was done in full agreement with Ecuadorian legislation and was approved by the IACUC committee of New York University. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Lindsey Smith and Pablo Stevenson for helpful comments made on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Schmitt, C., Fiore, A. (2014). Life History, Behavior, and Development of Wild Immature Lowland Woolly Monkeys (Lagothrix poeppigii) in Amazonian Ecuador. In: Defler, T., Stevenson, P. (eds) The Woolly Monkey. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects, vol 39. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0697-0_8
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