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Siamang Socioecology in Spatiotemporally Heterogenous Landscapes: Do “Typical” Groups Exist?

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Indonesian Primates

Part of the book series: Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects ((DIPR))

Abstract

Tropical rainforest habitats are the most biologically diverse and spatially heterogeneous landscapes on earth, including a bewildering variety of life forms organized into a complex three-dimensional lattice. Sumatran forests contain enormous numbers of plant species, some of which are present at low densities, and the dominant tree species vary with elevation, soil structure, other landscape features, and geographic region (Whitten et al. 2000). Natural and anthropogenic disturbances produce a diversity of microhabitats within each general habitat type. Plant dispersal dynamics, interactions among plant species or individuals within rainforest habitats, and plant-animal interactions may also result in uneven distributions of plants across space (Condit et al. 2000; Silva and Tabarelli 2001). Therefore, each unit of area in a rainforest habitat contains a set of plants that differs at least slightly from that in the adjacent area. Accordingly, for territorial animal species that utilize plant resources, the actual and relative availability of specific plant foods in a given month may vary substantially between territories, even among neighboring groups.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Sharon Gursky and Jatna Supriatna for their invitation to contribute to this volume, and for their patience throughout the writing process. Funding for this research was provided by the Leakey Foundation, Sigma Xi, the Fulbright Student Program, New York University, the New York Consortium for Evolutionary Primatology, the Margaret and Herman Sokol Foundation, and in the writing stages by Ewha University and the Amore Pacific Foundation. Permission to conduct research in Indonesia was granted by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), and permission to conduct research in the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park was granted by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry’s Department for the Protection and Conservation of Nature (PHKA). I thank the American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF), Universitas Indonesia and the Wildlife Conservation Society-Indonesia Program for considerable logistical assistance in Indonesia, and Mohammad Iqbal, Anton Nurcayho, Maya Dewi Prasetyaningrum, Teguh Priyanto, Janjiyanto, Sutarmin, Tedy Presetya Utama, Abdul Roshyd, and Martin Trisunu Wibowo for their assistance in the field. Thanks to Tim O’Brien and Margaret Kinnaird for many helpful discussions and for sharing unpublished data, and thanks to Noviar Andayani for her consistent support for me and my research activities in Indonesia.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, 28608, USA

    Susan Lappan

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  1. Susan Lappan
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Correspondence to Susan Lappan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Anthropology, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77843, U.S.A.

    Sharon Gursky

  2. Conservation International Indonesia, Jalan Pejaten Barat 16 A, Jakarta, 12550, Indonesia

    Jatna Supriatna

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Lappan, S. (2010). Siamang Socioecology in Spatiotemporally Heterogenous Landscapes: Do “Typical” Groups Exist?. In: Gursky, S., Supriatna, J. (eds) Indonesian Primates. Developments in Primatology: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1560-3_6

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