Monkeys on the Edge

Long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) have a wide geographical distribution and extensively overlap with human societies across southeast Asia, regularly utilizing the edges of secondary forest and inhabiting numerous anthropogenic environments, including temple grounds, cities and farmlands. Yet despite their apparent ubiquity across the region, there are striking gaps in our understanding of long-tailed macaque population ecology. This timely volume, a key resource for primatologists, anthropologists and conservationists, underlines the urgent need for comprehensive population studies on common macaques. Providing the first detailed look at research on this underexplored species, it unveils what is currently known about the population of M. fascicularis, explores the contexts and consequences of human-macaque sympatry and discusses the innovative programs being initiated to resolve human-macaque conflict across Asia. Spread throughout the book are boxed case studies that supplement the chapters and give a valuable insight into specific field studies on wild M. fascicularis populations.

Michael D. Gumert is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where he leads a field program investigating the behavioral biology and ecology of Macaca fascicularis in Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand. Recent research focuses on practical issues facing long-tailed macaque populations and he has organized international experts in a cooperative group to better understand the conservation and management needs of long-tailed macaques. Agustín Fuentes is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame. His current research projects include assessing behavior, ecology and pathogen transmission in human-monkey interactions in Southeast Asia and Gibraltar and examining the roles of cooperation, social negotiation and niche construction in primate and human evolution. Lisa Jones-Engel is a Senior Research Scientist at the Washington National Primate Research Center, University of Washington. Her current research focuses on cross-species infectious agent transmission and she coordinates several multidisciplinary research projects in Asia, funded by NIH, which focus on the role synanthropic macaques play in disease transmission.