HOPE reportNumber:19-032 Investigation on spatial distribution and vocal communication of wild spider monkeys in Ecuador. Report:Yukiko SHIMOOKA Date:2007/06/15 - 2007/09/18 I conducted a field research of wild spider monkeys (Ateles belzebuth
belzebuth) at Tiputini Biodiversity Station in Ecuador in collaboration with Dr.
Anthony DiFiore of New York University and his student.
First I visited New York University to exchange opinions about fission-fusion researches, then visited Tiputini Biodiversity Station and conducted 250 hours of simultaneous follows of two individuals in a same group with Mr.
Andres Link.
Spider monkeys have fission-fusion social organization, so we walked through their home range separately and followed the monkey each of us found independently.
We attached GPS on our backpack and recorded the location automatically every 2 seconds, and calculated the distance between two individuals by approximating the location of the target individual as that of the observer and clarified their spatial distribution patterns.
Long-loud calls, the long distant call of spider monkeys seemed to have affect on the transition of the between-individual distance, thus I also recorded long-loud calls with a directional microphone and digital recorder to clarify the existence of individual differences of this vocalization.
The future analysis will reveal how this vocalization affect the movement of the individuals and manipulate their fission-fusion social organization.
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