New Perspectives in the Study of Mesoamerican Primates:

Distribution, Ecology, Behavior and Conservation

Alejandro Estrada, Paul A. Garber, Mary Pavelka & Leandra Luecke, Eds. (2005)

Springer ISBN 038725854X  (hardback) £75.00 / $139.00

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As a mountainous meeting place for North and South American flora and fauna, Central America is, in biological terms, exceedingly rich with a great diversity of habitats and an abundance of species, both endemic and more widespread. The primate fauna of the region is not rich when compared to, say, Amazonia. In Central America it is seldom that more than three primate species will occur in sympatry, compared with the 8-11 that is common throughout most of Amazonia.

However, Central America hosts some of the most thoroughly-studied tropical and sub-tropical forests on the planet, area’s whose ecological intricacies are far better understood than at anywhere else. Areas like Panama’s Barro Colorado, Santa Rosa and a slew of other sites in Costa Rica, Belize and Mexico have long been sites of primate study. In addition such sites have been the source of immense bodies of long-term zoological and botanical data against within current primate studies can be contextualized.

Despite this plethora of data there has, until now, been no synthesis of what is known about Meso-American primates. Which is one of the reasons that New Perspectives in the Study of Mesoamerican Primates is so welcome an addition to the primatological bookshelf. Part of Springer’s excellent ‘Developments in Primatology’ series, the book’s 43 authors cover a wide variety of topics, with a depth and breadth that will be of great use not only to current and future researchers working on primates in the region, but form the bases for productive comparisons with primate communities in other parts of the world.

Following a scene-setting summary by the editors in which the current state of knowledge is summarized, gaps identified, conservation priorities cited and the array of human impacts exhaustively tabulated, the following 22 chapters of New Perspectives are divided between five parts. Part 1 contains a fascinating overview of the biogeography and distributional history of Central American primates and, along with providing a fine geological summary for the region identifies the progressive waves of immigration that led to current distributions. There is also a very welcome chapter in which Colin Groves and colleagues seek to clarify the tangle of taxonomic names that has grown up over the years, to fix species boundaries and to define which populations merit sub- and full species status. The extensive 50-page treatment recognizes 21 species and sub-species of which 16 are endemic to the region. Part 2 covers population responses to disturbance and, after an introductory overview by the editors, contains papers on effects of forest fragmentation, hurricanes, intestinal parasites (though, sadly, three of the four chapters deal specifically only with Alouatta pigra). The third section, considers a wide variety of behaviour and ecology aspects, including behavioural plasticity, travel patterns, use of landmarks, aspects of food choice, and primate sociology. Part four, conservation and management, ranges widely across the list of possible topics, and includes reports on the progress of spider monkey reintroductions, an overview of human-monkey coexistance and traditional agricultural methods, metapopulation analyses, mapping projects and a fascinating chapter by Alejandro Estrada and colleagues on the role of archaeological sites in the protection of primates in Guatemala and southern Mexico. The final chapter identifies conservation priorities and the work needed to address them, with a nice summary of how new technologies (such as analysis of fecally-derived hormones) ate likely to contribute.

A welcome aspect of the book is the editor’s the use of a biogeographical rather than geological definition of ‘Central America, a recognition that the Choco region of Colombia’s northern coast is bought into the discussion. There are, however, some strange omissions: the highly-successful black howler transplantation project at Cockscomb Basin, Belize, for example, and the absence of any papers dealing with community-based primate-focused conservation initiatives (such as Bermudean Landing, Belize – a complex situation that is so far from the conservation idyll it is often painted inn text books that it merits a place as a practical case study). In a region where it is a highly significant economic force, the failure to devote a specific chapter to the pros and cons of ecotourism as a regional conservation force is also something to be lamented. A chapter on fossil primates of the region would have added illuminating perspectives, and one can’t escape the feeling that the conservation sections might have benefited from a more proactive prescriptive approach where the threats and possible solutions were outlined for each taxon. In a fascinating area of such high human population growth and concentrated deforestation, this, above all else would seem to be the prime calling of primatology in the region at the present time.

Adrian A. Barnett

Centre for Research in Evolutionary Anthropology, Roehampton University