BIOGEOGRAPHY

Biogeography is the scientific study of how species and ecosystems are distributed across geographic space and through geological time. It explores how physical factors (such as climate, landforms, and resource availability) and biological interactions shape the presence and dispersal of organisms in different regions.

Today, more primates inhabit fragmented landscapes due to human expansion and development in natural areas. Evaluating the impact of this anthropogenic influence on primates poses a challenge, as the extensive time delays required to detect these effects often span several generations of long-lived animals. Additionally, the impact of human activity can be difficult to distinguish from habitat loss—an occurrence rarely found in untouched natural settings.

In Formosa, owl monkeys inhabit two ecologically distinct areas: continuous gallery forests and isolated natural forest “islands” within savannah landscapes. Our research is now expanding to these naturally occurring forest islands to explore the evolutionary trajectories and adaptive processes of the primates inhabiting them, aiming to understand how these unique environments influence their biology, life-history, and behavior.