Eat or be Eaten: Predator Sensitive Foraging Among Primates

Description

Predator sensitive foraging represents the strategies that animals employ to balance the need to eat against the need to avoid being eaten. Ecologists working with a wide range of taxa have developed sophisticated theoretical models of these strategies, and have produced elegant data to test them. However, only recently have primatologists begun to turn their attention to this area of research. This volume brings together primary data from a variety of primate species living in both natural habitats and experimental settings, and explores the variables that may play a role in primates' behavioural strategies. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that predator sensitive foraging is relevant to many primates, of various body sizes and group sizes and living in different environments. Eat or be Eaten encourages further discussion and investigation of the subject. It will make fascinating reading for researchers and students in primatology, ecology and animal behaviour.

LYNNE E. MILLER is head of the program in anthropology at MiraCosta College in Oceanside, California. For over ten years, she has studied the behaviour and ecology of a population of wedge-capped capuchin monkeys in Venezuela. She also chairs the Education Committee of the American Society of Primatologists and is an active member of the International Primatological Society.

"Succinct...each [paper] is short and to the point, with a clear empirical focus and a commendably uniform format. This book [provides] a very useful compendium of knowledge." Ecoscience