Chapter 5: Primate Diversity and Ecology

Chapter Outline

1. Why Study Primates?

1. Studying the behavior of primates gives us insight into our ancestors’ behavior, also known as “reasoning by homology.”
2. Studying the diversity of organisms allows us to see how adaptation works under different selective pressures, also known as “reasoning by analogy.”

2. What Are Primates?

1. Primates are our closest relatives and comprise an extremely diverse order.
2. Characteristics that define the primate order include:
• Opposable big toe and prehensile hands
• Nails instead of claws; fingerprints
• Hind-limb locomotion
• Unspecialized nose
• Highly developed vision
• Small litters of young with slow gestation and maturation periods
• Large brain
• Unspecialized molars and unique dental pattern

3. Where Do Primates Live?

1. Mainly in the tropical areas of Asia, Africa, South America, Mexico, and Central America.

4. Primate Taxonomy

1. Prosimians
• Many are nocturnal and have developed adaptations for life in the dark.
• This suborder includes lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers.
2. Anthropoids
• Larger than prosimians, they are normally active in the day, rely on vision rather than smell, and live in social groups.
• This suborder includes New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, and humans.

5. Primate Ecology

1. An animal’s energy requirements depend on:
• Basal metabolism
• Active metabolism
• Growth rate
• Reproductive effort
2. Primates require protein, carbohydrates, fats and oils, vitamins and minerals, and water, which they get from a variety of sources.
3. Four general types of primate diets are frugivore, folivore, insectivore, and gummivore.  Each are affected by primate dental patterns, dental morphology, and gut morphology (Figure 5.18).
4. Primate activity is regularly patterned and can be graphically depicted as having a “time budget” (Figure 5.20).
5. Primate groups have relatively fixed ranges in which they live and move.  These home ranges include access to food and resting places and are often defended by territorial behavior.
6. Primates need to be concerned about predation, and some have developed antipredator strategies.

6. Social Primates

1. Forms of primate social groups:
• solitary
• pair-bonded
• polyandry
• one-male (polygyny)
• multimale (polygyny)

7. Conservation

In This Chapter

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