Resilient primates as proxies of ecosystem health status.

KOWALEWSKI, M MARTIN

Mexico DF

Workshop; International Forum Primatology, Bio-cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development in Tropical Forests; 2017

The UNESCO Office in Mexico

Understanding the risks of zoonotic disease transmission is crucial to both human and animal health, especially in systems characterized by high rates of human-animal overlap. However, to explore this problem we need to understand the complexity of all the factors involved in our biological models. In many places, habitat modifications have resulted in primates confined to small fragments or forests without natural connections. These conditions are often associated with higher population densities, more contact with humans, and greater costs of dispersion. This complex interplay increases the likelihood of contracting diseases and the necessity to adapt to new diet combinations. Here, I present the results of our work on life history characteristics, patterns of parasitism, and diet in black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) in human-modified natural and peridomestic systems in northern Argentina. In our work, we view these resilient primates as sentinels of zoonotic diseases, as well as using non-invasive diagnostics to determine how various factors impact primate population health status. These results demonstrate how much more funding and attention needs to be focused on creating similar long-term datasets at other sites and deepening our work on the ecology at epidemiology of zoonotic and environmentally-mediated diseases at key sites like our study system in northern Argentina.