The Gibbons of Khao Yai Seasonal Variation in Behavior and Ecology

This series is a venue for the publication of PhD-level field studies of wild nonhuman primates in a format that is broadly accessible and more cohesive than the usual and sometimes artificial splicing of field study data into separately published peer-reviewed journal articles. As with other contributions to this series, both books represent a large body of data on wild primates, collected over a period of at least a year. Each monograph begins with an introductory chapter providing background material on the theoretical perspective and history of the topic, followed by information pertaining to the study population(s) and data collection methods. These introductory chapters are then followed by a series of "data chapters" that explore various aspects of the analyses--overall, a format very similar to (but more concise than) that of a PhD dissertation. Bartlett (Univ. of Texas, San Antonio), focuses on a species in which male-female relationships are far more important than those among females. His study deals with two social groups of white-handed gibbons in Khao Yai National Park in Thailand. This monograph is a more traditional, "classic" field study focusing on various aspects of behavioral ecology of the study subjects, including activity budgets, diet, feeding behavior, ranging behavior, intergroup encounters, and territoriality. Bartlett ends the work by drawing conclusions about socioecology and seasonality in white-handed gibbons as well as the ecology and evolution of pair bonding and monogamy in gibbons. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate through professional collections. -- L. Swedell, CUNY Queens College