K. D’Août and E.E. Vereecke (eds.), Primate Locomotion: Linking Field and Laboratory Research, Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-1420-0_8, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Abstract In this chapter, we use field-behavioral, morphometric, and laboratorybased data to demonstrate complex links among morphology, performance, and fitness. Although ...

I apply evolutionary perspectives and conceptual tools to analyse central issues underlying child health, with emphases on the roles of human-specific adaptations and genomic conflicts in physical growth and development. Evidence from comparative primatology, anthropology, physiology and human disorders indicates that child health risks have evolved in the context of evolutionary changes, along...

The idea that competition and aggression are central to an understanding of the origins of group-living and sociality among human and nonhuman primates is the dominant theory in primatology today. Using this paradigm, researchers have focused their attention on competitive and aggressive behaviors, and have tended to overlook the importance of cooperative and affiliative behaviors. However, coo...

In 1986, Samuels and Altmann reported evidence for a hybrid zone between Papio anubis and Papio cynocephalus in Amboseli, Kenya, in a baboon population that has been the subject of long-term study since 1971 [Samuels & Altmann, International Journal of Primatology 7:131-138, 1986]. In the current report we document ongoing patterns of hybridization in Amboseli between anubis and yellow baboons....

How do languages emerge? What are the necessary ingredients and circumstances that permit new languages to form? Various researchers within the disciplines of primatology, anthropology, psychology, and linguistics have offered different answers to this question depending on their perspective. Language acquisition, language evolution, primate communication, and the study of spoken varieties of p...

Percussive technology is part of the behavioural suite of several fossil and living primates. Stone Age ancestors used lithic artefacts in pounding activities, which could have been most important in the earliest stages of stone working. This has relevant evolutionary implications, as other primates such as chimpanzees and some monkeys use stone hammer-and-anvil combinations to crack hard-shell...

Stable isotope analysis of primate tissues in tropical forest contexts is an increasingly popular means of obtaining information about niche distinctions among sympatric species, including preferences in feeding height, forest canopy density, plant parts, and trophism. However, issues of equifinality mean that feeding height, canopy density, as well as the plant parts and plant species consumed...