Darting Primates: Steps Toward Procedural and Reporting Standards
Abstract
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media New York Darting, a common method of capturing
wild primates, poses risks to the individuals that must be appropriately minimized.
A recent article in the International Journal of Primatology by Cunningham et al.
(International Journal of Primatology, 36(5), 894–915, 2015) presented a literature
review of the reporting of darting procedures in primatology and anonymously surveyed
primatologists on darting methods and their effects, to report general trends in the
field. We quantitatively reexamined 29 articles described by the authors as having
information on fatalities and/or injuries. We think that the various body masses of
primates (1 kg–150 kg), along with their locations and habitat types, and the degree
of experience of the darting team, should be considered when estimating mortality
and injury rates, and thus preclude the computation of an average mortality value
across taxa. Nevertheless, we computed an average (mean) for comparison with the previous
analyses. Our mean estimated mortality rate was 2.5% and the mean estimated injury
risk was 1.5% (N = 21 articles). Thus, our estimated mortality rate is smaller than
the combined mortality and injury rate of 5% reported by Cunningham et al. (International
Journal of Primatology, 36(5), 894–915, 2015) and smaller than the mortality rates
of medium-sized terrestrial mammals they used for comparison. Our study strongly suggests
the critical need for more data to be analyzed in a standardized fashion.
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Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16139Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1007/s10764-017-9963-zPublication Info
Fernandez-Duque, M; Chapman, CA; Glander, KE; & Fernandez-Duque, E (2017). Darting Primates: Steps Toward Procedural and Reporting Standards. International Journal of Primatology. pp. 1-8. 10.1007/s10764-017-9963-z. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/16139.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Kenneth Earl Glander
Professor Emeritus of Evolutionary Anthropology
Primate ecology and social organization: the interaction between feeding patterns
and social structure; evolutionary development of optimal group size and composition;
factors affecting short and long-term demographic changes in stable groups; primate
use of regenerating forests.

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