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Monkeys' winter death toll shows true value of friendship in natural selection
From phys.org:
The devastation caused by an exceptionally cold winter to a population of wild monkeys has enabled scientists to show for the first time a link between an animal's social relationships and its chances of surviving in extreme environmental conditions.
Thirty endangered Barbary macaques native to a region of the Middle Atlas Mountains in northern Morocco died over the course of the 2008/2009 winter, when snow almost one metre deep covered their home range for more than three months, drastically reducing access to food on the ground.
This death toll, most likely due to starvation, represented two thirds of the total population of two groups of macaques that a multinational team of primatologists and ecologists has been observing as part of the Barbary Macaque Project. Only 17 monkeys survived into the spring which finally arrived in March 2009.
Dr Richard McFarland and Dr Bonaventura Majolo from the School of Psychology at the University of Lincoln, UK, analysed data they had gathered in the six months prior to the cold weather arrived, to see which socio-ecological factors best predicted the monkeys' survival.
more ...
Thirty endangered Barbary macaques native to a region of the Middle Atlas Mountains in northern Morocco died over the course of the 2008/2009 winter, when snow almost one metre deep covered their home range for more than three months, drastically reducing access to food on the ground.
This death toll, most likely due to starvation, represented two thirds of the total population of two groups of macaques that a multinational team of primatologists and ecologists has been observing as part of the Barbary Macaque Project. Only 17 monkeys survived into the spring which finally arrived in March 2009.
Dr Richard McFarland and Dr Bonaventura Majolo from the School of Psychology at the University of Lincoln, UK, analysed data they had gathered in the six months prior to the cold weather arrived, to see which socio-ecological factors best predicted the monkeys' survival.
more ...
