Abstract
The females among more than 7000 long-tailed macaques, Macaca fascicularis,that had recently been trapped for biomedical research were examined for pregnancy. The animals were taken from the wild in the north of Peninsular Malaysia during the period 1978 to 1979 and in the south from 1978 to 1982. Both samples showed some pregnancies in all months of the year and a peak during the months of May to July. Additional peaks in other months in some years showed that, while the midyear pregnancy peak was significant, it was not as marked a phenomenon as is the breeding peak in many other species. This might be due to the complexity and unpredictability of both the climate and the macaques’ food supply in Peninsular Malaysia. The additional peaks also illustrated the pitfalls of generalizing about breeding seasonality on the basis of small samples.
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Kavanagh, M., Laursen, E. Breeding seasonality among long-tailed macaques,Macaca fascicularis, in Peninsular Malaysia. Int J Primatol 5, 17–29 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02735145
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02735145