In today’s post we are going to talk about a new project we started this month. In this new project we are looking for dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus) along the eastern limit of their distribution. As we had mention in several post and pages in this website, dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus) is an endemic primate mostly distributed in Meta department and a small part of Cundinamarca, around Medina town. However their distribution limits in the East are poorly known and seems to be delimited by Upia and Meta rivers.
So this new project is focused in surveys done on both sides of Upia and Meta rivers. We started by doing sampling in both sides of Upia river near to Villanueva and Barranca de Upia towns.
Why close to towns? Well when you start a new project in a new area, you start close to places where you can have accommodation and food accessible and in places where you have contacts that can give you access to forest fragments inside private lands. Thanks to our contacts with Stella Gutierrez and don Arturo Aguirre of La Bendición de San Miguel agroturistic farm, we are able to start looking for new additional points that give us a better idea where dusky titi monkeys can be found.
While looking for new places, rural roads passing close to forest fragments can be additional points to detect monkeys. This strategy can help you cover large extensions of area and help you to select possible areas with potential to answer your questions. A detailed study of maps from the potential area you are surveying is always a first step to do projects in which multiple sites are necessary.
Although I will prefer to start project involving multiple sites during dry season, our changing rain patterns make those decisions difficult and in areas with relatively short dry season, such as Orinoquia region, we usually start any time of the year. But why is better to start in dry season? Well multiple sites usually means less time in each site and if it rains too much you can loose lots of time due to rain and you field schedule suffer. Logistics become more complicated and costs increases.
Sometimes those are some considerations not always taken in account while planning a project that can make your fieldwork stressful if you are not flexible enough to understand that weather is not something you can control. Fortunately for us weather has been helpful and rain didn’t stop us to make our surveys.
We already done surveys in one side of the river and get some data, lets hope surveys in the other side give us even more interesting data to clarify the distribution limits of our endemic dusky titi monkey or Mono Zocay as they are know by locals in Spanish.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities.
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Today’s post is a guest post by Jose Manuel Vásquez Rey, a senior highschool student from Villavicencio who has been observing one of the Colombian squirrel monkey’s groups living inside Villavicencio city.
Lately, I have been working with the diet of new world primates, specifically with the Colombian Squirrel Monkey -S. cassiquiarensis albigena- and you could be asking yourself, what is a 17-year-old researching about such a specific topic? Well, that is exactly what I’m going to explain in this entry.
Ecology has always been my passion, since the first grades of school the Colombian Llanos ecosystems caught my attention due to the multiple endemic species that could be found, as a consequence of how near this context is to me and how I can appreciate the fauna inside Villavicencio. That’s why in high school I decided to focus my graduation project on the squirrel monkey. Additionally, in the past few years the presence of them inside the urbanization increased (at least by sights) as a result of the lack of transition between the gallery forests and constructions; besides that, news about roadkills and electrocution in S. cassiquiarensis albigena were becoming more frequent.
What I just mentioned lead me to make an approach of historic researching in this specie, to understand how the exponential growth of Villavicencio in the last 30 years is affecting them, nevertheless studies about them in this city are really uncommon so the data is nonexisting and the interviews with citizens to collect it would not be enough, considering that people in urban areas does not focus too much on animals because of the constant hurry.
At that moment, I found myself with a really confusing path (taking into account that is my first time deepening in biological studies) and had to search for aid with Xyomara, who helped me to focus the project to something feasible, so on we decided to center the attention in a monkeys feeding point, knowing that giving banana to this specie is a really common activity between locals and tourists, and how this activity affects the behavior and patterns of diet on them, something that is actually leading me to obtain interesting results.
Now, I want to reflect about the observation, and I can assure you that it requires patience and dedication. The period of study in my case was approximately 2 months and a half, going there 2 hours daily between 4 to 5 days a week, so it was hard after school. At first, it was a challenge, differentiating monkeys and what they were eating and doing was kind of difficult. But with time, I improved my abilities and understand their behaviour, taking into account external factors (like sound, cars, dogs, etc.) and acknowledge patterns, as well as some specific traits to differentiate them (wounds, scars and lack of tail) and it was satisfactory to feel how they familiarized with my presence in a short period. This left me with multiple experiences that affected me deeper than just a school project. Seeing and providing help to a youth squirrel monkey that suffered electrocution led me to grasp the cables as a danger, by how they use them to move and hoe infants and juveniles bite them. Besides that, there were curious injuries in some monkeys, that seemed like infected tissue in the tail, this would be interesting to evaluate to know the cause and if it can impact the group as a whole.
In conclusion, after observation, Squirrel monkeys took a part of my heart and my concern, seeing how normalized people have to feed monkeys and treat them like an attraction has to be stopped knowing how their food -at least in my hours and location of sight- is in a big proportion banana, that is clearly don’t part of their diet and can potentially affect them.
Jose’s observations has highlighted the importance of observing monkeys inside cities to better understand threats faced by these populations inside urban areas that are not always so evident. Solutions to problems like feeding wildlife require behavioral changes that usually involve economic alternatives to people living around them and usually using them as a tourist attraction. As well as education campaigns in the surrounding areas.
On the other hand, reducing electrocution will involve coordination with electricity companies and environmental authorities that are more complex to achieve.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities
© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website. Thank you. This post have pictures from José Manuel Vasquez Rey, pictures only can be used with his permission.