The importance of fallback foods in primate ecology and evolution |
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Authors: | Paul J. Constantino Barth W. Wright |
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Affiliation: | 1. Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology, Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC;2. Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, Department of Anatomy, Kansas City, MO |
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Abstract: | The role of fallback foods in shaping primate ranging, socioecology, and morphology has recently become a topic of particular interest to biological anthropologists. Although the use of fallback resources has been noted in the ecological and primatological literature for a number of decades, few attempts have been made to define fallback foods or to explore the utility of this concept for primate evolutionary biologists and ecologists. As a preface to this special issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology devoted to the topic of fallback foods in primate ecology and evolution, we discuss the development and use of the fallback concept and highlight its importance in primatology and paleoanthropology. AmJ Phys Anthropol 140:599–602, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. |
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Keywords: | diet niche keystone |
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