Time constraints imposed by anthropogenic environments alter social behaviour in longtailed macaques
Section snippets
Study Subjects and Study Site
Research protocols were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee at the University of California (no. 20593), Davis, and met the legal requirements of Malaysia.
We studied four groups of wild longtailed macaques in anthropogenic environments around Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from September 2016 until September 2017. Two groups (Pirate's and Lip's group) were studied at Batu Caves (hereafter BC), a Hindu temple and major tourist attraction in Malaysia (3°14′14″N, 101°41′02″E). The
Site-specific Differences
Monitoring rates between sites differed significantly, with higher rates in BC than in TP (w = 2958, NBC = 56, NTP = 53, P < 0.001; Fig. 2a). Similarly, individuals at BC engaged in more human–macaque events (w = −2919, N = 109, P < 0.001; Fig. 2b) and in less grooming than individuals in TP (w = 81, N = 109, P < 0.001; median: TP = 0.079; BC = 0.008). In addition, both outcome variables (grooming frequency and groom diversity) were differentially distributed between sites (see Supplementary Material). These findings
Discussion
The present study takes an important step forward in understanding the impact of humans on social behaviours in animals living in an anthropogenic environment. In this study, we tested two hypothetical frameworks through which overall human activity and/or interactions with humans may affect social behaviour of nonhuman primates in contrasting ways. Our results provide support for the time constraints hypothesis and partial support for the social stress hypothesis. Evidence from TP, where the
Acknowledgments
We are thankful to the Economic Planning Unit Malaysia, the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks Peninsular Malaysia and Tourism Selangor for giving us the permission to conduct this research. We thank our research assistants Camille Luccisano, Eduardo Saczek, Silvia La Gala, Nur Atiqua Tahir, Shelby Samartino and Rachael Hume for their help in collecting data. We also thank the editor and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on
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