Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
these highly clumped food resources. Contest over clumped resources leads
to more agonistic or dominance-based relationships, where aggression would
be competitively advantageous, and thus there would be selection for greater
levels of despotism (Sterk
et al
1997
; van Schaik,
1989
). A second difference
is that in Singapore, regular trapping and removal of individuals occurs when
conflict between humans and local communities escalates, while little or no
such effort to remove potentially aggressive animals occurs at tourist temples
sites. This raises an important question - Does the variation in the human-
produced feeding ecology and the difference in macaque-to-human aggression
(i.e., human killing of macaques) represent an important anthropogenic select-
ive pressure on macaque behavior? (
Figure 13.2
).
Understanding how humans have affected the evolution of macaque behav-
ior will be important not only to evolutionary biologists, but also to manage-
ment planners for human-macaque conflict. Evolutionary-based research holds
the potential for identifying breeding and population control programs that can
reduce human-macaque conflict. An evolutionary approach also raises import-
ant considerations to organizations that are manipulating the reproductive biol-
ogy of their macaques through sterilization (Martelli,
2009
; Bunluesilp,
2009
;
Wong and Chow,
2004
). At this point in time, we simply do not yet know how
our activity affects the population genetics of macaques. Therefore, current
management practices that utilize sterilization or culling are working blindly in
terms of reproduction control. By taking an evolutionary biological approach
to human-primate relationships, we could make significant improvements in
our basic understanding of the important factors driving human-macaque sym-
patry, and use this information for better planning of management strategies
related to reproductive control.
Long-term research and human-macaque communities
The importance of long-term research programs in supporting and developing
sustainable human-macaque communities cannot be understated. Long-term
research is known to support conservation and the sustainable development
of communities by obtaining knowledge on the people, wildlife, and envir-
onment of the region. Moreover, the project personnel maintain a stable,
long-term presence, and thus can develop strong relationships with the local
communities and governments, playing an important role in educating and
advising these communities (Wrangham and Ross,
2008
). Research pro-
grams focusing on long-tailed macaques and their interfacing human com-
munities have occurred in Bali, and have played important roles in learning
about monkeys and how they interact with their communities (Wheatley
