Variation in body mass and morphological characters in Macaca mulatta brevicaudus from Hainan, China.

Abstract

The rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is the most widely distributed nonhuman primate species in the world, with six subspecies distributed through China. From 2012 to 2014, we conducted studies on the body mass and morphological variation of the southernmost subspecies M. m. brevicaudus in Nanwan Nature Reserve for Rhesus Macaque, Hainan, China. We compared measurements with other populations of this species. We also investigated the inter-group body mass variation from seven provisioned free-ranging groups in our study site. Our results show that M. m. brevicaudus has the smallest body size, the smallest body mass, and the shortest tail among rhesus macaque subspecies. Its sexual dimorphism score is also among the lowest, which is similar to other southern distributed subspecies in China, but smaller than northern distributed subspecies. We found that the average body mass of female macaques is not correlated with their dominance ranks. There are significant differences in body mass among the seven adjacent study groups at the same site, suggesting the existence of inter-group competition. Average body mass of a group is better described by a quadratic function of group size than a linear one as predicted by the socio-ecological model. Am. J. Primatol. 78:679-698, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.