ABSTRACT
While planning th is study from my graduate school on Long Island in New York, far from the tropical forests of Bolivia, I tried to picture how callimicos would behave in the wild. My images were basically that of a very shy, very black tamarin. Although callimicos do behave like tamarins in many respects, they diverge from the tamarin behavioral and ecological repertoire in ways I had never imagined. The most surprising finding of this study is that callimicos eat fungi almost every day, from dead trees rotting on the ground and from bamboo stalks and branches. This reliance on fungi as a food resource influences many other behaviors including locomotion, ranging, and habitat choice. In addition, it is clear that mycophagy influences reproductive strategies, social structure, and social organization. In this chapter I will synthesize the results of this project from ecological, evolutionary, and conservation perspectives. The goal of this synthesis is to make recommendations for future studies that will improve our understanding not just of callimicos but of primates in general.
