太行山猕猴研究进展与展望

猕猴广泛分布于从阿富汗到泰国和中国南部的亚洲地区.分布于中国的猕猴有6个亚种.太行山猕猴为猕猴华北亚种Macaca mulatta tcheliensis,系中国所特有,目前仅分布于河南、山西两省交界的太行山和中条山南端地区,为世界野生猕猴分布最北的种群.自20世纪80年代初期开始,学者们在数量与分布、形态学(包括普通形态学、骨骼系统形态学)、生态学、微观生物学、疾病、实验技术等方面,对太行山猕猴展开了研究.本文对已有的研究成果进行了综述,并提出了今后亟待开展的研究工作,以期能有助于对这一珍稀物种的有效保护.

Research Advances and Prospects for Macaca mualatta tcheliensis in the Taihangshan Mountains Area, China

Rhesus macaques are found ubiquitously throughout Asia, from Afghanistan to India and Thailand to southern China. They are used for an extraordinary range of biomedical and basic research. Due to their close genetic, physiologic, and metabolic similarity to humans, this species serves as an essential research tool in neuroscience, behavioral biology, reproductive physiology, neuroendocrinology, endocrinology, cardiovascular studies, pharmacology, and many other areas. Macaca mulatta tcheliensis, an endemic subspecies of rhesus macaque to China, are distributed mainly in the southern parts of the Taihangshan and Zhongtiaoshan Mountains area which was the northernmost range of rhesus macaque. These macaques, referred to as the Taihangshan macaque, live in secondary deciduous forests at elevations between 300 m and 1200 m (984 ft and 3937 ft) with a temperate climate and cold, snowy winters similar to the climate of the central, midwestern United States. Rhesus macaque are categorized into Grade II in the list Chinese Key protected animal species. Since early the 1980s, researchers had conducted some works on its population and distribution, morphology (including general morphology and skeleton morphology), ecology, microbiology, diseases, and other fields. In this article, we summarized those published works, and outlined further research needs to be done in the future. We aim to promote effective and long-term conservation on Taihangshan macaques.