Introduction
Primates are highly charismatic and often serve as flagship species in conservation efforts. They are also the closest living relatives of humans, and therefore hold the keys to resolving many questions about human evolution and ecology. However, the slow life histories of primates, combined with their complex social systems, their behavioral plasticity, and the challenging field conditions in which primate researchers must work, have severely limited analyses of mortality and fertility in wild, unprovisioned primate populations. This in turn limits comparative analyses that can shed light on the population dynamics and the social and ecological adaptations that have shaped both human and nonhuman primate evolution.
This database contains individual-based life history data that have been collected from wild primate populations by nine working group participants over a minimum of 19 years. The purpose of collecting data of this type is to make comparative analyses that can shed light on the population dynamics and the social and ecological adaptations that have shaped both human and nonhuman primate evolution. Records in the database include mortality and fertility schedules across multiple primate taxa. The data are searchable and can be downloaded into csv format.
This site was produced by the Evolutionary Ecology of Primate Life Histories Working Group through the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent). This site is currently only accessible for the working group members. If you want to see a subset of the actual database, please visit the Biography page or Fertility page, which include example datasets.
How To Cite This Database
Please cite the following paper:
Karen B. Strier, Jeanne Altmann, Diane K. Brockman, Anne M. Bronikowski, Marina Cords, Linda M. Fedigan, Hilmar Lapp, Xianhua Liu, William F. Morris, Anne E. Pusey, Tara S. Stoinski and Susan C. Alberts. 2010. The Primate Life History Database: a unique shared ecological data resource. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 1(2): 199-211.
Documents
Related web resources
- NESCent award page of the working group
- Source code on GitHub
- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)