In today’s post we want to discuss a common practice that sometimes generates interpretation and identity problems in science, common names. Common names are the names that local people give to animals in a region or country. Sometimes those names came from other regions, countries or even continents as it’s the case of common name for our jaguar that usually is tiger. This is reflection of colonial times when Spanish people who arrive to America called jaguars “tigers” as it is a big cat as the original tiger of Asia. Some of these common names remains in our minds and cultures for centuries and changing these common names to more appropriate names for our species is not always easy. Our last example is one that have been changing over the years although there are areas in which jaguar are still called tigers.
But why we wanted to discuss about this? Our reason is because in this website and many publications product of all work done in this project had one of these confusing common names that we notice recently. As I mentioned several times in this website, I had been studying monkeys for over 25 years, during this time monkey’s taxonomy had changed over the last decade and with taxonomy some common names also changed to be more accurate to reflect that taxonomy. The case we are talking about is dusky titi monkey or ornate titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus). In 1995 when I learned primate taxonomy this species was a subspecies of dusky titi monkeys, todays known as Callicebus moloch, a species from Peruvian Amazon very similar to another specie also called dusky titi Callicebus cupreus from Ecuatorian Amazon, from which Plecturocebus ornatus was a subspecies, until 2016. The reason for using this common name to different species is that at some point all these species were considered the same species, although they have different names in local languages. Therefore, when I started this project ornate titi monkeys were still dusky titi monkey until 2016, by Byrne and collaborators, when a new taxonomy for the whole subfamily Callicebinae.
So, as you see sometimes changing common names cost us a bit of time, but in order to be more precise and follow the IUCN red list classification in this website we are going to use ornate titi monkey as the common name to our endemic Zocay, as it is known in Spanish. A good practice in science is to be updated in taxonomy, even if the focus of your research is focus on other disciplines inside biology as this is a field in which changes are continuous and make exciting discoveries almost everyday.
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==
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Today’s post is about the best part of my work, every year at the beginning of each year, my work and energy are focus on counting baby monkeys, especially Colombian squirrel baby monkeys. So as usual we start our year in Zocay Project by counting babies of Colombian squirrel monkeys, as well as ornate titi monkeys and Brumback night monkeys. All these species have babies between December and March.
The beginning of 2024 started with some new babies of all these species in San Martin, Cumaral and Villavicencio area. In following months, we also recount some of these groups as well as do our counting in Villanueva area. Also, we observed some of the older females in our Colombian squirrel monkey’s groups healthy and some seems to be pregnant and still reproducing.
But why is so important to us to count those babies? A way to know if a population is stable, growing or decreasing is by knowing how many babies born each year and more important how many of those babies survive that year and continue growing until they become adults and reproduce themselves. So as one of our main objectives is to know what is happening with monkey’s populations in the areas where we work, that is why the beginning of every year is so important for us. It is also important to do this counting every year because monkeys have long lives, therefore for a baby to grow to be an adult several years need to pass and you need be able to count and try to follow up those babies as many years as possible to be able to know what happens with their lives.
We also finished this month the field season from our collaborative project with Dr. Martha Ortiz about patch and landscape-scale effects on Brumback night monkey’s presence and abundance. Now it is time for our analysis part, more news on this project in following months.
We also started our logistic arrangements to our trips to areas that are limits of ornate titi distribution to confirm those limits and again we are grateful to Chalcraft Little Fund for their support to our work. We are also planning to expand our work on ornate titi monkeys as conservation for this species in the ground is highly need it. So, in following months we will give you more news about new activities and projects related with ornate titi monkeys and monkeys conservation, in general. Stay tuned and if you want to help, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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==
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In today’s post we are going to talk about the second part of our year’s balance for this ending year 2023. This second part is about collaborations and project. This was a year full of both of them.
As mentioned in our last post we collaborate with Onca foundation in our camera trap project. This project is already finished but we will be writing a paper with the main results of this project in following months. If you want to know some of the exciting recommendations result from this project visit our post about it here.
However, this wasn’t our only collaboration this year, additionally we collaborate with SUSA group from Universidad de Los Llanos, especially with Dr. Martha Ortiz with who we are developing a landscape scale project about the effects of landscape variable on Brucmback night monkeys (Aotus brumbacki) presence in fragmented landscapes, hopefully at the beginning of next year we will give you some news on the results of this exciting project. In this project we also continue collaborating with Cumaral Biodiversa and Finca El Silencio in Cumaral town where groups of this species usually are found close to the urban area.

This year we also support an incredible and dedicated student from Nuevo Gimnasio School in Villavicencio who study Colombian squirrel monkeys behaviour who is feed by tourist and local people. If you want to know more about his experience, read here.
We also launched a citizen science project to complement the data we had been collected for a couple of years now about dusky titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus), an endemic species of Colombia, which distribution area is mostly in fragmented areas. We area also waiting for some funding to clarify some of its distribution limits, so hopefully we will have some exciting news about this project in the following months. For now, we want to thank all private reserves and organizations that already send us its data to make this project possible. If you want to collaborate, share your data with us or volunteer with us in this project please see our post about this exciting project here.
We also continue collecting data about primate populations living in fragmented areas of San Martin and Villanueva towns, and Villavicencio city where we continue doing group’s counting and, in some areas of San Martin town, we continue monitoring groups that had been observed now for almost two decades in terms of demographic and ecological data. This data is focus on the monkey species present in each zone. We are grateful with all landowners that allowed us to make samplings in their lands for almost two decades.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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In today’s post we are going to start our year’s balance for this ending year 2023. This year was an intense and dynamic year for us with multiple participations in conferences and talks with different audiences, from scientific to kids. As well as assistance to regional events and technical discussions.
Our first event was our participation, in collaboration with Onca Foundation, to the VIth congress of zoology in which we presented the preliminary results of our camera trap project. This project aimed to establish wildlife use of water sources used for cattle in private farms. Use of water sources, artificial and natural, by wildlife include a wide variety of mammals, birds and reptiles. Some recommendations from this project can be found in Spanish and English here
Our next event was our participation in a vaccination campaign of farm dogs in our study area. This campaign was an international campaign to reduce the impact of domestic dog’s diseases on wildlife. Some studies had found transmission of diseases from domestic dogs to wild canids and felids in areas where both speciez enter in contact. Therefore, prevention and vaccination of domestic dogs and cats are important tool to reduce this disease prevalence in wildlife.
We also participate in a couple of talks with kids from Police School in Villavicencio to celebrate environmental and biodiversity day. These talks were focused on monkeys present in Villavicencio city as well as a small story for small kids to learn about dusky titi monkeys and its importance.

We also participate in regional symposium of biodiversity in the Orinoquia region organized by National Parks of Colombia, where biodiversity experiences from the Orinoquia region were presented.
Finally, we participate in a virtual forum to celebrate Dr Chuck Snowdown contributions to primatology, where we share our experience and lessons learned over the past 28 years of studying monkeys in Colombia, here.
In our next post, we will share our projects and collaborations in 2023. We are grateful with all people who invite us to participate on these events.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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First I want to apologize for this post delay, but to be complete honest with you, it was hard to find a topic to talk about. However, during past days I had the opportunity to share my experience and knowledge with a potential future biologist. While talking with him I realize that part of Zocay Project success is that we had persisted working in private lands by a combination of good decisions and hard work, especially during early years, and being able to adapt ourselves to talk with people of different backgrounds over the years.
Those initial good decisions build trust between landowners and researchers/ students because we were able to sit and listen to each other, share our knowledge and agreed on management actions that benefit them and the wildlife inhabiting their land. This couldn’t be possible without the hard work of some students and my persistence, despite all challenges, to continue working in those farms.
Being able to talk with people of different backgrounds is extremely important when working close to people, not matter if it is landowners, farm workers, peasant or indigenous communities. Our skills to talk and explain scientific concept to people is part of the success of any long term project.
Another important factor is to be able to secure financial support, probably the most difficult part and one that for sure I didn’t master yet.
Additional factors that influence your success on a long term project is your personal motivation. For me, being close to monkeys and forest as well as trying to understand how they persist and survive despite all threats surrounding them are my constant motivations to continue as long as the landowners allow me to be in their farms.
So, if you are thinking about implementing a long term project not matter the context or species you study, first build trust with people living in the area and listen their concerns, work together to find solutions and consult each other opinions when making management decisions. Stay motivated and never loose your passion for what you are doing.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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Today’s post we are going to discuss some of the challenges we faced when we apply for jobs different from typical academic job or outside of academy, although some surprises can be found also when applying to academic institutions too. And you need to support your experience.
Typical answers to the question: What make you an expert or specialized on a specific topic? Could be time you had been working/ studying that specific topic inside and/or outside of academy or a certificate or diploma about that specific topic. In the case of primatology, despite of a few masters that are focused on primates most people working in primatology came from different backgrounds and different careers such as biology, ecology, psychology, anthropology, veterinary and even medicine. Therefore, a diploma on primatology usually is not what you have to demonstrate that you specialize yourself or are an expert in primatology. Most of us who had been in academy and had been working for several years with primates have our publications to support our claims of that specialization on primatology.
However, some jobs require that you upload certificates and job letters but not publications for their applications, this is particularly true in countries like Colombia in which everything need to be certified by a diploma and most of the time you also add job certifications to your applications. So, in these cases how do you support that you have experience in primatology? Well if you are lucky enough of had worked on projects involving primates, you will have that supported experience. Volunteer work also help when the organization in which you make your volunteering give you a letter.
However what surprise me a lot and make me write this post is how despite your publications, letter of support from paid work and volunteer work explicitly saying you worked with primates, for some institutions, even some academic institutions these doesn’t represent a proof of support that you have experience in primatology. I had to say that at the beginning my first reaction was anger, I didn’t spend more than 25 years working with monkeys in the field and publishing for the last 15 years for someone to tell me I don’t have experience working in primatology. But then, I also notice that it was evident they didn’t take the time to read all the supporting documentation. This also make me think of how perverse the system is that governments and institutions had created to bureaucratize job offers.
An additional problem of these type of systems, at least in Colombia, is the belief at government level that post doctorate is another type of study that gives you a diploma. This is not new; we had several reports of universities in the country promoting post doctorate programs in which you paid for a diploma instead of institutions paying you for your work as in other countries.
This kind of systems only promotes more corruption and even normalize it inside and outside of academy. So, my advice, especially for people in Colombia is to continue publishing despite not always being recognized as experience, ask for support letters from all jobs you have and ask them to make explicit the kind of work you did for them and think twice before applying to public jobs with bureaucratized systems.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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In today’s world in which climate change and biodiversity loss crisis are of high priority and concern to all of us who study life, we often forget that some basic information to understand and mitigate the effects of both climate change and biodiversity loss are still need it such as species distributions. In today’s post I want to discuss some challenges that this kind of studies presents and how important these studies are in endemic species cases.
Colombia is a privileged country in terms of biodiversity and endemic species. However, for some endemic species there is still gaps in their distribution limits that challenges all conservation actions we do on behalf of these species. Colombia’s internal war, had represented an obstacle for the definition of species distribution limits as well as our abrupt geography. Since peace agreement some areas had become open to register new species, to rediscover forget species populations and to access to areas that had long being suspected to be distribution limits of endemic species.
These is the case for our endemic dusky titi monkey or mono zocay (Plecturocebus ornatus), in Spanish. Since its description as a subspecies and up to know part of their northern, eastern and southern limits had been not verified. Current hypothesis for its limits are related to a widespread theory of rivers acting as geographic barriers of species distributions, especially for small vertebrates that are unable to swim and cross those rivers.
Some of the challenges of species distribution studies had is the number of records need it to delineate those limits, which implies large expeditions by rivers and sampling in multiples sites, something that requires a lot of logistic and economic resources that funding agencies and grant are not always willing to give to this kind of projects. However, internet and natural applications such as inaturalust had opened new opportunities to register data of new sites in which species had been seen. This year we started a new project to clarify northern, eastern and southern limits of dusky titi monkeys, so I want to make a call to all people living, visiting and having farms along the Upía, Meta, Metica and Guayabero rivers to share with us pictures and locations where you have seen this beautiful endemic species of primate in Colombia. You can send all you records and/or you names in inaturalist to xcarretero@gmail.com for us to collect and improve our knowledge on the distribution limits of this species.
SPANISH
En el mundo de hoy en el cual el cambio climático y la crisis de la pérdida de biodiversidad son de alta prioridad y preocupación para todos los que estudiamos la vida, a menudo olvidamos que alguna de la información básica para entender y mitigar los efectos tanto del cambio climático como de la pérdida de la biodiversidad aún son necesarios como las distribuciones de las especies. En este blog quiero discutir algunos retos que este tipo de estudios presentan y lo importante que son estos estudios en el caso de especies endémicas.
Colombia es un país privilegiado en términos de biodiversidad y especies endémicas. Sin embargo, para algunas especies endémicas aún existen vacios en sus límites de distribución que representan retos para todas las acciones de conservación que hacemos en mombre de estas especies. La guerra interna de Colombia ha representado un obstaculo para la definición de los limites de distribución así como nuestra geografía abrupta. Desde la firma del acuerdo de paz, algunas áreas se han vuelto disponibles para el registro de nuevas especies, el redescubrimiento de poblaciones olvidadas de especies y para el acceso a áreaa que por largo tiempo se ha sospechado que son limites de distribución de especies endémicas.
Este es el caso de nuestro mono endémico el mono zocay (Plecturocebus ornatus). Desde du descrpción como subespecie y hasta ahora parte de sus límites norte, oriental y sur no han sido verificados. Hipótesis actuales para sus limites se relacionan con la teoria ampliamente distribuida de los ríos que actuan como barreras geograficas de la distribución de especies, especialmente para vertebrados pequeños que no son capaces de nadar y atravesar esos ríos.
Algunos de los retos que los estudios de distribucion de especies tienen es la necesidad de delinear esos límites lo que implica grandes expediciones a lo largo de rios y muestreos en multiples sitios, algo que requiere mucha logistica y recursos económicos que las agencias de financiamiento y becas no siempre estan dispuestas a dar a este tipo de proyectos. Sin embargo, internet y las aplicaciones de naturaleza como inaturalist han abierto nuevas oportunidades para registrar datos de nuevos sitios en lis que las especies han sido vistas. Este año empezamos un nuevo proyecto para clarificar los limites norte, este y sur del mono zocay, de forma que quiero invitar a las personas viviendo, visitando y que tengan fincas a lo largo de los ríos Upía, Meta, Metica y Guayabero para que nos compartan sus registros de fotos y ubicaciones fonde hayan observado esta hermosa especie endémica de mono en Colombia. Pueden enviar sus registros y/o nombres en inaturalist a xcarretero@gmail.com para que podamos mejorar nuestro conocimienyo de los limites de distribución de esta especie.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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In today’s post we are going to discuss some of the main results from our project with camera traps on artificial water sources used by native wildlife and some recommendations for landowners raised from this project. In this project we located camera traps facing artificial (plastic and cement cattle water containers and artificial lagoons) and natural (natural lagoons and relicts of Mauritia flexuosa swamps) water sources in a cattle ranching landscape.
Water sources surrounded by forest were visit by 63 species of mammals, birds and reptiles. Native fauna used artificial water containers and artificial lagoons surrounded by forest more often than the ones surrounded by pastures. Mauritia swamps are used as corridors in the landscape as well as water source. Colombian squirrel monkeys (Saimiri cassiquiarensis albigena) and red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus) were recorded drinking water from cattle water containers. Red howler monkeys and black-capped capuchins (Sapajus apella fatuellus) use artificial lagoons surrounded by forest and Mauritia flexuosa swamp relicts for different activities as well as for drinking water.

Recommendations for landowner
From our observations and the camera trapping results the following recommendations can be used by farm owners to improve native wildlife use of artificial water sources:

– Reduce the height of water container used in forest edges to increase native fauna use of these container during dry season.

– Increase of Mauritia swamps cover and reduction of its degradation as these areas are used for many species to move in the landscape.

We want to give special thanks to our funding, Little Chalcraft Fund, and our partners Onca Fundación para el estudio de la diversidad, to make this project possible.
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. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
© 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.