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Ways to support professional capacity of emerging conservation leadership in primate range countries., (© 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

International laws and conventions have gone a long way in reducing the number of wild primates entering the United States of America (US) for the pet trade. However, breeding primates for sale to private owners in the United States continues, and individual states present a bewildering array of laws and regulations on the holding of primates as pets. As primatologists we can act to decrease the demand for primate pets by (1) speaking out on the inappropriate use of primates in mass media and especially in social media; (2) not posing in photographs in close proximity to primates; (3) continuing to educate about why primates do not make good pets; and (4) contributing to the science that underlies state and federal legislation with the goal of eliminating captive breeding of primates for the pet trade. We encourage primatologists and others in related fields to be cognizant of the persistent commercialization of primates and be willing to take action to deter it., (© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

This commentary emerged from a panel presentation at the International Primatological Society Congress in Nairobi, Kenya, 2018. The goal was to provide regional updates on the status of primate removal from habitat countries, especially for the pet trade, and develop guidelines that could help primatologists address this critical problem. The trade in live primates includes those used as pets, in entertainment, and as subjects of biomedical experimentation, but here we focus on those primates destined for the pet trade. Such transactions are a hugely lucrative business, impacting hundreds of thousands of individuals annually and affecting the survival of wild populations. Being intimately familiar with primate social behavior, life history and biology, primatologists, whether they work with captive or wild primates, are in a unique position to understand the nature of the trade and attempt to counter its effects. In addition to updating the status of the primate pet trade, we provide recommendations that may help primatologists formulate a plan to deal, locally and regionally, with illegal trafficking in live primates. General guidelines include increasing awareness of local customs, policies and laws; developing collaborative research opportunities for local people; engaging in training/informational opportunities; and instructing on how to take action when encountering illegally-trafficked primates., (© 2019 The Authors. American Journal of Primatology published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The scope of data now available for primates from long-term field and captive studies has opened up exciting possibilities for investigating age-related patterns of reproduction. Valuable information on the aging process can be gleaned through broad cross-taxonomic comparative studies that include lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans. Thus, across all taxa discussed in this volume, female reproduction was found to be complex and dynamic, affected by the interplay of multiple exogenous and endogenous factors. Throughout their lives, females differ in their individual reproductive output. As they age, a period of reproductive instability is common among female primates and perimenopausal- like hormonal changes have been noted in many species. Available data from lemurs and callitrichids indicate that at least in some species, age-related declines in reproduction are manifested as diminished success of females to rear their young to weaning age. Few data are available for New World primates, but the same observation holds true for Old World monkey females, who also are characterized by declines in sexual activity and decreased birth rates. In apes, captive data suggest the presence of an appreciable postreproductive lifespan but this has not been confirmed in the wild. Menopause may be manifested as an evolutionary continuum across primate taxa with the potential for an extended postreproductive lifespan evident in cercopithecines and apes.

In this article, the authors discuss functional and operational menopause in primates in response to the study by J.G. Herdon and A. Lacreuse. They agree with the authors' account of reproductive aging and defined the types of menopause. They argue that functional menopause occurs later in the wild and agreed that among captive chimpanzees, permanent cessation of mentruation is rarely observed. They stress that they are awaiting for a study on menstrual and endocrine observations by the.