LAUSR.org creates dashboard-style pages of related content for over 1.5 million academic articles. Sign Up to like articles & get recommendations!

The (Mis)use of the Term “Commensalism” in Primatology

Photo by videoqueenstl from unsplash

This commentary arose from a workshop entitled ‘What works, and what doesn’t work? The challenge of creating effective applied conservation research in human-modified habitats’, held during the joint meeting of… Click to show full abstract

This commentary arose from a workshop entitled ‘What works, and what doesn’t work? The challenge of creating effective applied conservation research in human-modified habitats’, held during the joint meeting of the European Federation for Primatology and the Primate Society for Great Britain in Oxford, 2019. One discussion point highlighted the different use of terminology between disciplines as a challenge for effective multidisciplinary conservation research. Growing number of publications have drawn attention to the misuse of the terms such as human-wildlife conflict (Marshall et al. 2007, Peterson et al. 2010, Davidar 2018), crop-raiding (Hill 2017), or ecotourism (McKinney 2017). Here we widen this conversation by reflecting on an additional term regularly used in primatology: commensalism. Here, we will give the different definitions of the term ‘commensal’ used across disciplines and the implications of its misuse. We will then discuss whether this term can be used to categorise human-nonhuman primate (afterward primates) relationships, and conclude by proposing alternative terminology.

Keywords: term; mis use; primatology mis; commensalism; primatology

Journal Title: International Journal of Primatology
Year Published: 2020

Link to full text (if available)


Share on Social Media:                               Sign Up to like & get
recommendations!

Related content

More Information              News              Social Media              Video              Recommended



                Click one of the above tabs to view related content.