The four families are ranked together as the Platyrrhini clade. There are four families of New World monkeys: Cebidae, Aotidae, Pitheciidae, and Atelidae (Groves 2001). The New World monkeys are found in Mexico, Central America, and South America, and the Old World monkeys are located in Africa, central to southern Asia, Japan, and India. In reality, monkeys are not a single coherent group and therefore do not have any particular traits that they all share. Together, the New World monkeys and the Old World monkeys and apes are considered to be "higher primates," or simians (infraorder Similformes), while the prosimians (such as lemurs) are considered to be the "lower primates." The term monkey thus refers to any simian that is not an ape or any primate that is neither an ape or a prosimian. New World monkeys are one of three major informal groups of the biological order Primates, the other two groups being (1) prosimians and (2) monkeys and apes of the Old World. However, they are particularly effective as seed dispersers, both in terms of quantity (large number of seeds) and quality (high per capita seed survival) (Russo and Augspurger 2002).Īs they require large tracts of undisturbed forest and specialize on ripe fruits, spider monkeys may be considered an indicator species the monkeys are threatened by habitat destruction through continued agriculture and residential development. Ecologically, they play a role in food chains, consuming fruits and nuts and being consumed by jaguars, harpy eagles, or small cats such as ocelots. With their unique forms, great agility, and social behaviors, spider monkeys add greatly to the human enjoyment of nature. Found in tropical forests from southern Mexico to Brazil, spider monkeys belong to the subfamily Atelinae with the woolly spider monkeys (genus Brachyteles) and the woolly monkeys (genus Lagothrix). Spider monkey is the common name for the arboreal, tropical New World monkeys comprising the genus Ateles of the primate family Atelidae, characterized by very long, prehensile tails, long arms, and thumbless hands. Black-headed spider monkey ( Ateles fusciceps)
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