In today’s post we are talking about our last fieldtrips looking for ornate titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus), including a trip to a wonderful area where Orinoquia, Andean and Amazonian fauna and flora meet, an area of great beauty and complex topography. In our search for ornate titi monkeys, we traveled from this species northern limit towards south looking for this elusive monkeys, using vocalizations, informal interviews and direct sightings to find a species of small monkeys which is endemic mainly to Meta department. In our trip in the north, we only found them in few places. However, they still remain in forest fragments close to towns and cattle ranches.Then we travel to the southern part of its distribution, in the amazing Macarena area, where they are in gallery forest fragments close to streams and Guayabero river, in the north bank. Traveling towards Guayabero river south bank, we found a cousin of ornate titi monkeys, white-chested titi (Cheracebus lugens), a similar monkey of black fur with white hands and white collar. In our trips along Guayabero river we also witness other monkeys, resting in tall trees we saw red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus), woolly monkeys (Lagothrix lugens), and spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth). We also saw Colombian squirrel monkeys (Saimiri albigena) and black capped capuchins (Sapajus apella) running and catching arthropods close to river banks. Our trip took us a bit more south, to larger patches of lowland forest, with high canopies. This higher canopy give us an additional surprise, a larger and colorful monkey, with bird sounds flying through tall trees, a black ouakary (Cacajao ouakary). This is a big monkey with short tail, poorly known even to local people in the area. We didn’t see other monkeys more typical from Amazonian forest such as black mantle tamarin (Leontocebus nigricollis) and Humboldt white-fronted capuchins (Cebus albifrons), both species rarely seen by local guides. We also look close to town for nocturnal monkeys, but this elusive small monkeys didn’t let us see them. If you love to see monkeys this area will give you some amazing surprises with a wide diversity of species from Orinoquia and Amazonian regions that you can combine with bird species unique from this area. Local tourist guides have a wide knowledge and potential to include fauna watching, birds, dolphins and monkeys, in their activities as a complement to its touristic activities.We take advantage of our visit to this incredible area, to also organize a small talk about monkeys with tourism guides where we share our monkey stories. We talk about monkeys and how we can take care of them and ways to coexist with them while they develop their economic activities. So, if you visit La Macarena town area, look for birds, dolphins and monkeys, while you visit the river of seven colors, ask questions to local guides as they love to talk about their local fauna and let us know what you see.If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. Pictures in this post were taken by Francisco Gomez. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website or contact xcarretero@gmail.com

In today’s post we are discussing more filed news, as our fieldwork continues with the project of ornate titi monkey’s distribution limits revision, we are getting a better idea of what is the current state of this endemic primate near of its distribution limits. Samplings had been challenging in terms of logistic as it is not always easy to get access to forest, however local people information had been of great importance in this project as well as additional information given by local tourism guides, especially those focused on bird watching. So, we would like to make a call for us scientist to take advantage of the information that this group of dedicated professionals that spend a lot of time inside forest to also help us to collect information about all those primate species of which we knew very little.

So. if you are a tourism guide focused on bird watching who had seen primate species while observing birds, please contact us and let us know what monkeys and where had you seen them. (Spanish: Si eres guía turístico enfocado en observación de aves que has visto monos mientras observas aves, por favor contáctanos y déjanos saber que monos has visto y donde).

Apart from the logistic challenges, ornate titi monkey’s cryptic behavior also represents a challenge when sampling in areas close to roads with high traffic, where can be observed but they became more elusive and tend to be more silent and less responsive to playbacks. However, these challenges had also some great advantages such as the additional fauna that have been observed during these samplings, with capybara tracks (Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris), horned screamer (Anhima cornuta), crab-eating foxes (Cerdocyon thous), giant ant eaters (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), Iguanas (Iguana iguana) and coatis (Nasua nasua) among other mammals, reptiles and birds observed during our terrestrial and riverine samplings in search of ornate titi monkeys. Additional observation of groups of other primate species also had been important as new changes for some of the species in the are occurring in terms of taxonomy and distribution. We also want to thank Primate Conservation Inc. for the additional support they grant us to continue with field sampling to better determine the northern limits of ornate titi monkeys.

In terms of other projects, we are developing, we had done some progress on squirrel monkey populations counts (Saimiri albigena (before known as Saimiri cassiquiarensis albigena)) inside Villavicencio city as well as some progress on understanding many threats this species faced in urban areas, where provisioning is becoming more common as a source of tourism income. This particular threat has been addressed by other organizations in Villavicencio with some degree of success. Although there are other threats such as electrocutions and attacks by domestic dogs that still need to be addressed. More news about this project result and publication coming soon!!

Our project about Brumback night monkeys (Aotus brumbacki) in which we evaluate variables at different scales on this species presence and abundance had its field season finished at the begging of this year, however we continue working in our publication that had receive some incredible comments from reviewers and we want to thank them because it had increased our understanding of this species enormously. More news and publication about these results coming soon!!!

If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?

© 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 or contact xcarretero@gmail.com