Dissertation Research: Socioecology of the Slender Loris (Loris Tardigradus Iydekkerianus) in Dindigul, South India

细长的懒猴是印度和斯里兰卡的夜行灵长类动物。昼行性灵长类动物，如猴子、猿和狐猴，一直是检验灵长类动物群居生活起源和适应性假设的主要对象。人类学家假设，当灵长类动物利用聚集的食物资源时，社会群体更受青睐，比如一棵大树冠树上的水果，或者社会群体与灵长类动物延迟的生活史（即，缓慢的生长和依赖的童年）有关。任何旨在解释灵长类动物社会性的有力假设，都必须能够解释群居性较差的夜行灵长类动物的具体情况。本研究解决了以下关于懒猴的一般性问题：1)寻找分散的果实或昆虫资源的社会相关性是什么？2)吃空间上聚集的食物有什么社会关联？3)延迟生活史的社会关联是什么？研究方法旨在统计分离和表征懒猴表达社会互动的环境，这反过来将测试从白天活动的灵长类动物发展而来的社会理论。本研究的另一个重要意义是，获得的栖息地偏好和行为的补充信息将有助于濒危懒猴的保护。

The slender loris is a nocturnal primate of India and Sri Lanka. Diurnal primates, such as monkeys, apes and lemurs, have served as the primary subjects for testing hypotheses about the origin and adaptiveness of gregarious living in primates. Anthropologists have hypothesized that social groups are favored when primates utilize clumped food resources, such as fruit in a large canopy tree, or that social grouping is a correlate of primates' delayed life histories (i.e., slow growth and dependent childhood). Any robust hypotheses intended to explain primate sociality must be able to account for the specific cases of the less gregarious nocturnal primates. This study addresses the following general questions about lorises: 1) What are the social correlates of foraging for dispersed fruit or insect resources? 2) What are the social correlates of feeding upon spatially clumped food items? 3) What are the social correlates of delayed life history? Study methods are designed to statistically isolate and characterize the contexts in which lorises express social interactions, which in turn will test social theory developed from the diurnal primates. An additional significance of this study is that supplemental information obtained about habitat preferences and behavior will contribute to conservation of the threatened loris.