Behavioural ecology of the extinct papionines

A model of the time budgets of baboons is used to explore the behavioural ecology of extinct species of baboons. The model allows us to determine the maximum ecologically tolerable group size that a population could sustain in a particular habitat without overtaxing its time budget. This in turn allows us to determine the range of environmental parameters under which a given species could survive. The simulations indicate that maximum ecologically tolerable group sizes would have been significantly lower in habitats where individual species were not present than in those habitats where they are known to have occurred, suggesting that populations would have found it difficult to survive in just those habitats where they appear to have been absent. The models suggest that the ecological relationship between the papionids and the theropiths has always been complementary rather than competitive. Finally, the analyses suggest that Dinopithecus may have been ecologically more similar to the gelada than the baboons. © 1992.