The Socioecology of Adult Female Patas Monkeys and Vervets in Kenya

This series is a venue for the publication of PhD-level field studies of wild nonhuman primates in a format that is broadly accessible and more cohesive than the usual and sometimes artificial splicing of field study data into separately published peer-reviewed journal articles. As with other contributions to this series, both books represent a large body of data on wild primates, collected over a period of at least a year. Each monograph begins with an introductory chapter providing background material on the theoretical perspective and history of the topic, followed by information pertaining to the study population(s) and data collection methods. These introductory chapters are then followed by a series of "data chapters" that explore various aspects of the analyses--overall, a format very similar to (but more concise than) that of a PhD dissertation.

Pruetz (Iowa State) frames her study of patas and vervet monkeys around the basic tenets of socioecological theory, which predicts that the abundance and distribution of food resources will play a significant role in shaping patterns of sociality in female primates. In an attempt to elucidate this predictive relationship, Pruetz investigated the impact of food abundance and distribution on patterns of food competition and dominance relationships among adult females in two closely related cercopithecine primates, patas monkeys and vervet monkeys. After an in-depth, sophisticated analysis of the relationships among these various factors, Pruetz concludes that most socioecological models are too broad, and the variables insufficiently quantified, to make reliable predictions about these relationships.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. -- L. Swedell, CUNY Queens College