Dispersal in primates: advancing an individualized approach

摘要

As a universal aspect of natural history, dispersal is important to multiple disciplines within the natural sciences, including behaviour, ecology, evolutionary biology, genetics and conservation biology. Who disperses when, where and how (behaviour and ecology) can lead us to understand why dispersal occurs at all (evolutionary biology) and what the consequences of dispersal are for populations in the short term (e.g., degree of genetic differentiation) and in the long term (e.g., population viability). It is important, then, to document the natural history of dispersal if we are to gain greater understanding of these broader perspectives. Unfortunately, documenting dispersal has turned out to be exceedingly difficult, for several reasons. First, not every individual disperses, and for those that do disperse, it is often a once-in-a-lifetime event. What are the chances that this event will be witnessed by scientists? Second, studies are often not sufficiently long to document beyond anecdotal information on dispersal, and anecdotes are currently difficult to publish. Finally, the circumstances faced by animals before and after they disperse are often only documented when collecting such data does not interfere with the main purpose of the study. Focusing on dispersal in a grant proposal is likely to be as risky as dispersal itself! The difficulties are even more challenging for those studying long-lived animals, which are typically slow to mature.