There is a catch, though. Extinction means more than the disappearance of species. Each species contributes to the health and stability of the overall ecosystem, so some species will be missed more than others. Jukka Jernvall of the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Patricia C. Wright of the State University of New York, Stony Brook, examine the problem in a report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. As animals, primates are highly visible.
Zoologists know their habits well.
Many of them are also threatened with extinction. Conservationists have ranked this threat, so researchers can get an idea of the order in which primates are likely to become extinct. The researchers paint a portrait of the future in which the critically endangered primates disappear, followed by those listed as merely 'vulnerable'. Jernvall and Wright also break down their scenario by regions. For example, the ecological effects of primate extinctions are least severe in South America, even though the loss of species there would be great.