Brachyteles arachnoides E Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire 1806
Creators: name: Russell A. Mittermeier
name: Anthony B. Rylands
name: Don E. Wilson
Publisher: name: Lynx Edicions
Year: 2013
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Mammalia
Primates
Atelidae
Brachyteles
Brachyteles arachnoides

description: 24.
Southern Muriqui
Brachyteles arachnoides
French: Muriqui du Sud / German: Sudlicher Spinnenaffe / Spanish: Muriqui meridional Other common names: Southern Woolly Spider Monkey
Taxonomy. Brachyteles arachnoides E Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1806,
Brazil. Restricted by C. Vieira in 1944 to Rio de Janeiro.
Two subspecies were formerly recognized as arachnoides and hypoxanthus. C. P. Groves in 2001 classified them as separate species. Monotypic.
Distribution. SE Brazil, through the coastal Serra do Mar in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, and NE of Parana, the N limits are the Serra da Mantiqueira and the rios Paraiba and Paraiba do Sul.
Descriptive notes. Head-body 49-6 cm (one male) and 47-9 cm (one female), tail 72:6 cm (one male) and 75-3 cm (one female); weight 10-2 kg (one male) and 8-5 kg (one female). These measurements are from the Fazenda Barreiro Rico, Anhembi, Sao Paulo. Two adult males recorded by C. Vieira, one from Juquia and the other from Ubatuba, both in Sao Paulo, measured: head-body 63 cm and tail 65 cm. Sexual dimorphism of the Southern Muriquiis absent, except for small differences in lengths of canine teeth; males have longer canine teeth. Coat coloris very distinctive, being predominantly beige, with light, or dark brown or light gray-brown coloration. Geographic and regional variations in coat pattern exist. Southern Muriquis retain black pigmentation of the face, palms, and soles of the feet from infancy into adulthood. Adult males and females develop only minor depigmentation, characterized by small pink or white spots in the pubic region and sometimes on the face. Juveniles and adults have a pronounced round belly, due to their extensive small and large intestines for leaf digestion. They have long arms, a metacarpal hook with no external thumb, and a long prehensile tail, with the final third being glabrous with a sensorial tactile surface. Males have a large conspicuous scrotum, and females have an elongated cylindrical clitoris.
Habitat. Evergreen, dense, montane and submontane, semi-deciduous and deciduous forest at 40-1500 m above sea level in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Southern Muriquis originally occupied seasonal semi-deciduous forests of the Sao Paulo Plateau, but today only one population remains there, in forest patches in the Fazenda Barreiro Rico.
Food and Feeding. Diets of the Southern Muriqui vary seasonally. They are strictly herbivorous. They have not been seen to eat insects or small animal prey, but insects are undoubtedly ingested incidentally with fruits and leaves. They are predominantly frugivorous, but leaves are also an important part of their diet. Studies at foursites in four different forests in Sao Paulo indicate a diet ofripe and unripe fruits (45-73-2%), young leaves (3:5-12%), mature leaves (1-7-37%), and flowers (2-6%). They occasionally eat tree bark, vines, and branches, and they also eat soil. At Carlos Botelho State Park in Sao Paulo, they feed on 138 different plant species. They are more folivorous (leaves make up to 67% of the diet) in degraded semi-deciduous forest fragments at Fazenda Barreiro Rico on the lowland plateau, where fruits are scarce. Southern Muriquis sometimes “camp out” together in varying numbers (2-42 individuals) in the late afternoon to sleep near a large patch offruiting trees and remain there for two or more days.
Breeding. Southern Muriquis have long developmental periods. If similar to the Northern Muriqui (B. hypoxanthus), puberty occurs at c.7 years of age. Reproduction is seasonal, with mating occurring mainly during the rainy season (October-November). Births occur throughout the year, but there is a peak in the dry season (May-June). The ovarian cycle is c.21 days, and gestation is ¢.216 days.
Activity patterns. Southern Muriquis typically feed most in the early morning and late afternoon. They rest for some time after the first morning meal, which is followed by traveling and foraging until late morning. In the dry cold months of the austral winter (June-July), they rest more in the morning and frequently may spend the entire morning in the same place. Resting increases in the hot austral summer, especially during the hottest hours of the day in the early afternoon. When fruit is more abundant in winter months, they are more active and travel and feed throughout the afternoon.
Movements, Home range and Social organization. Southern Muriquis are primarily arboreal; they spend a negligible amount of time on the ground, and then just to drink water or, rarely, eat soil. They live in multimale-multifemale groups but, at certain times of the year, split into subgroups to forage and travel. Subgroups are fluid in their composition. Daily movement patterns are determined strongly by the distribution of trees with edible fruits. Home range in the pristine continuous forest of Carlos Botelho State Park is ¢.340 ha. Sometimes they travel across their home range in a single day; daily movements vary from ¢.600 m in dry cold months up to 5100 m in hot wet months (average 2267 m). Male and female Southern Muriquis have different daily home ranges, which may be associated with energetic demands of reproduction. Females travel more during the day to acquire alternative foods, which may be explained by their nutritional requirements for reproduction. Females disperse when close to puberty (6-7 years old). Infanticide has never been recorded. Most of the time, Southern Muriquis are not aggressive and have high levels of tolerance for each other. Nevertheless, non-affiliative behaviors such as inter-individual chasing, attempts at biting, body-touching and body-grabbing occur, and a coalitionary lethal killing was once observed in Carlos Botelho. Six individuals mounted a fatal attack on an older male. Reasons for the killing were thought to be related to resource competition for food or reproductive females. The main predators include large cats such as the Puma (Puma concolor) and the Jaguar (Panthera onca), medium-sized cats such as the Ocelot (Leopardus pardalis) and Geoffroy’s Cat (Leopardus geoffroyi), and small cats such as the Oncilla (Leopardus tigrinus) and the Jaguarundi (Puma yagouaroundi). The black hawkeagle (Spizaetus tyrannus) can also take infants. Southern Muriquis give alarm calls, which they also use for snakes such as Bothrops and Micrurus.
Status and Conservation. CITES Appendix I. Classified as Endangered on The IUCN Red List. Southern Muriquis are classified as endangered on the Brazilian List of Threatened Species. Their numbers have declined from an estimated 400,000 individuals before 1500 to less than 2500 in 2008 because of widespread forest loss and hunting. They are hunted for cultural and recreational purposes and, notably today, by illegal palm heart harvesters while camping in the forest. The upper tail muscles of the Southern Muriqui are particularly prized for food, and this culinary preference persists among hunters and palm harvesters. The current population status of the Southern Muriqui is not well known, and there are ongoing studies to this end by the non-governmental organization Associacao Pro-Muriqui as part of a national action plan developed by the Brazilian government. It is now extinct in several protected and unprotected areas where it was once abundant, and the main reasons were illegal hunting and lack of law enforcement. Southern Muriquis are thought to occur in 18 public and private protected areas, but all but four are too small, or the habitat is too degraded, to fully protect their populations. Recent estimates indicate that 1300 Southern Muriquis remain in disjunct populations in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, with three smaller, fragmented populations in Parana (Castro) and the interior of Sao Paulo (Fazenda Sao Sebastiao in the Serra da Mantiqueira and Fazenda Barreiro Rico on the Sao Paulo Plateau). The largest populations occur in the largest tract of continuous forest of the Atlantic Forest Biome, the World Heritage Site of the Southern Reserves of the Atlantic Forest, which includes the contiguous Carlos Botelho (37,432 ha), Intervales (45,000 ha), and Alto Ribeira (55,000 ha) state parks and Xitué State Ecological Station (3095 ha). Carlos Botelho State Park has a population of ¢.500 individuals.
Bibliography. Aguirre (1971), Coimbra-Filho et al. (1993a), Coles et al. (2011), Groves (2001), Hill (1962), Koehler et al. (2005), Lemos de S&, Pope, Glander et al. (1990), Lemos de S4&, Pope, Struhsaker & Glander (1993), Lemos de Sa et al. (1990, 1993), Martins (2005a, 2005b), Milton (1984a, 1985a, 1985b, 1986), Mittermeier et al. (1987), de Moraes (1992), de Moraes et al. (1998), Nishimura et al. (1988), Strier (2000), Strier & da Fonseca (1997), Strier & Ziegler (1997, 2000), Talebi (2005, 2008), Talebi & Lee (2010), Talebi & Soares (2005), Talebi, Bastos & Lee (2005), Talebi, Beltrao-Mendes & Lee (2009), Vieira (1944).
description: Published as part of Russell A. Mittermeier, Anthony B. Rylands & Don E. Wilson, 2013, Atelidae, pp. 484-549 in Handbook of the Mammals of the World – Volume 3 Primates, Barcelona :Lynx Edicions on pages 547-548, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5727205