Biogeography and Primates: A Review

Abstract

In this paper, we present an introduction to primate biogeography at a continental level and then review the literature as it pertains to primate studies. Primate species diversity is highest in the Neotropics and Asia. Most primates range into rain/humid forests in Africa, Asia, and the Neotropics. Asia contains the highest total number of primate species (N = 38) that are considered to require conservation attention, followed closely by the Neotropics (N = 33 species). These biogeographic patterns reflect complex phylogenetic, geologic, and ecological processes. The various biogeographic theories and models used to explain these patterns can be organized into several broad categories (1) descriptive studies, (2) comparative-quantitative approaches, (3) refugia theory, (4) phylogenetic approaches, (5) community ecology, and (6) conservation biology. Descriptive models have been derived from distribution data obtained during collecting expeditions. These models focused on geographic variations in species characteristics and barriers to dispersal (e.g., Gloger's Rule, Bergmann's Rule, Allen's Rule, river barrier hypothesis). With the advent of digitized statistical procedures, these barriers became testable biogeographic hypotheses using comparativequantitative models. Thus, many researchers have noted the importance of rivers as

Biogeography of Amazonian fishes: deconstructing river basins as biogeographic units

“…Wallace (1852) is widely recognized as the first author to highlight the influence of rivers in the distribution of tropical species (Lehman, Fleagle, 2006). Indeed, in the neotropical region, rivers have been proposed as biogeographic barriers for birds (e.g., Remsen, Parker, 1983;Caparella, 1992;Hayes, Sewlal, 2004), reptiles (e.g., Rodrigues, 1991;Pellegrino et al, 2005;Passoni et al, 2008), and mammals (e.g., Eisenberg, 1981).…”

Migration Load, Ecological Opportunity, and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder Etiology: Obsessive Character as an Adaptation to Seasonality

“…Still, high-latitude winters tax primates' ability to survive, decreasing their numbers, lowering diversity, and compelling populations to subsist on low-quality foods during the winter dearth (Harcourt 2012). Thus, nonhuman primates are largely restricted to a narrow latitudinal band, existing primarily in the tropical forests around the equator (Brockman 2005;Lehman and Fleagle 2006). For much of their evolutionary history, human primates showed the same tropical distribution (Stearns and Hoekstra 2005) being confined to the equatorial old world (Sherrat and Wilkinson 2009) sheltered from the "thermoregulatory stress caused by exposure to extreme winter seasons" (Foley 1993, page 31).…”

Clade-specific impacts of human land use on primates

“…Considering that regions vary greatly regarding their biogeographic history and the intensity of land transformation, and have distinct primate assemblages (Lehman and Fleagle, 2006;Ellis et al, 2010), it is not surprising that we did not find the same pattern across all regions. Knowledge on clades-specific threats across regions can provide insight needed to design effective clade-specific conservation plans (Corey, 2010; Loyola…”

“…Only cells with presences were used for further analysis. We split the occurrence data per continent; Madagascar was analyzed separately from continental Africa, due to its historical isolation, which generated a completely distinct biota in this island (Lehman and Fleagle, 2006). We used primate species composition in each cell for further analyses.…”