Monkey Forest Tales: How is it to fund a long-term project in Colombia?

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A few weeks ago, there was a twitter from a person who work/ use to work in government in Colombia asking long-term projects in Colombia to contract national professionals. What this twitter said it wasn’t bad per se, but it has a big lack of knowledge about how difficult actually is to get funding to pay salaries.What most people don’t know is that salaries are rarely cover in most grants, especially small grants that are the ones used to cover most of the expenses in long-term projects.Most long-term project manage by small NGOs where there is only one person managing all aspects of a project, not necessarily had a salary to cover this person. Actually most of the small NGOs are manage by compromised professional who loves what they do and have additional jobs to cover their basic needs. So please don’t assume that if you see a long-term project, or even most of research projects done in countries like Colombia, they had excess of money to pay salaries, especially salaries for professional biologist/ecologist.Most grants cover logistic expenses (transport, food, local people payments per day, and logging) but no salaries to cover the time spend on analyzing data, making financial and technical reports, making grant applications, making maps. All that time is free labor done by most managers and directors of smalls NGOs and research project directors.Support from governments and governmental institutions is limited and depends on political connections and specific interests and government agendas. Therefore we use international grants that doesn’t cover salaries and continue having more than one job to do science and study the organisms that we love and want to conserve.So my advise to people wanting to do research in Colombia is to get a job in a university/ institution and work in their research projects unless you want to have more than one job and still do research in your passion. It is a reality that anyone want to tell you while you are studying, but it is part of science reality in countries like Colombia.

If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website.

Monkey Forest Tales: Why we had so little information about Brumback nigh monkey (Aotus brumbacki)?

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  Brumback’s owl monkey (mono nocturno; Aotus brumbacki)

In past days, while talking about Zocay Project results, someone ask me why we had so little information about Brumback nigh monekys (Aotus brumbacki) in general. In this post we are going to talk about this species, what had been done and what is still need it to be done to better understand this nocturnal primate species of Colombian Llanos.Brumback night monkeys are one of the 11 species of nocturnal monkey from genera Aotus spp. They are distributed in the piedmont of Colombian Llanos, but its eastern limits are not clearly defined, although it seems it can go up to Orinoco River. Information about this species is limited to a few studies, an undergraduate thesis from Solano in 1995 where she reported a group’s activities, home range and daily distance, as well as a list of plants from which they feed. An anecdotal report of a female Aotus brumbacki female consumed by a group of black capped capuchins (Sapajus apella fatuellus) by Carretero-Pinzón et al (2008) and a list of plants consumed by this species in forest fragments by (Vargas et al. 2023).But why there is so few studies on this species? Well, working at night have its own challenges and it is not always easy to see them and even more difficult to follow a group of this species, and other species of nocturnal animals. Another issue is that not everyone is good to work at night and to be in the dark inside a forest, this is one of those things that trigger some of our deepest fears, which make even more challenging to work with this and similar species. Some technologies can help and may be that is something we need to explore in the near future. For now, at least, we are working on two additional studies with this species that we hope can help us to better understand and protect this species in the study area and its distribution area. Studies about this species in forest fragments are important as most of its known distribution area is located in an area that is continuously deforested, so if you like to work at night and are interested in monkeys, like hot weather and don’t feel afraid of working at night inside forest, please feel free to contact me.If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?© Copyright Disclaimer. All pictures used on this web page are protected with copyrights to Xyomara Carretero-Pinzón. If you want to use any of these pictures, please leave a message on the website.

Monkey Forest Tales: Celebrating 20 years of Zocay Project

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One day in March of 2004, I started a small project in a cattle ranching farm, where owners wanted to know what species of monkeys were living in their forests as well as how many of them were there. What I didn’t know is that thanks to the interest of landowners of this and neighboring farms as well as nearby reserves this project will become my life research project, Zocay Project or “Proyecto Zocay” in Spanish. And this year, this project that was not only build by me, but also all the students, volunteers and collaborators, had 20 years. This project had many challenges over time but probably the best part, apart from looking at monkeys in every step, is the learning process. Since a few months after the beginning, I started to mentor undergraduate students and that had been the biggest learning lesson from this project.
I not only had learned about monkeys living in forest fragments in an amazing part of Colombia, piedmont of Colombian Llanos, but through mentoring students I had learned about myself and how I would have liked to learn myself, what things I wish I knew when I was starting this process. How to relate with different types of people, from different background and with different dreams and challenges in life. Not always was an easy process but I hope that I was able to teach and help my students in their own learning process.
This project had its lows and ups as many research projects had, especially in terms of funds, however we had been able to learn about monkeys and how they cope with forest fragmentation and other threats that they face in human transformed landscapes. This project had also taught me to see monkeys from different perspectives. I started as a natural history researcher, focus on behavior, then I focus more on the ecological aspects of their lives, focusing on what was happening in the forest fragments where they live. However, once I started to study ecology of primates living in forest fragments, I notice that monkeys move beyond forest fragments and use other landscape structures, such as living fences, isolates trees, wire fences and other human-made structures to move and find food resources. Therefore, this project also had expanded my way to see nature and how primates relate with their surroundings.
I want to thank all our supporters over the years, as well as all students, volunteers and collaborators, my advisors over the years and specially all the landowners in which this project had performed its activities in San Martin, Cumaral, and Villavicencio for all their support and for allowed me to study monkeys in their lands. Thank you all and let’s hope this project continues for more years…
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?
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Monkey Forest Tales: The importance of our hobbies in science careers

In today’s post I want to highlight again the importance of all our hobbies and other activities that we do outside of our science career. I had a student who is beginning his science journey and I had been thinking of all the things I would like someone had told me, when I was starting. So here I will hive you some of that advise I would like someone had given me earlier.
If you are hyper focus as I was when you start you career in scince, my first advise will be take advantage of any experience you are offer to learn about other groups different that the one you love the most, even when you are complete sure that group of organism are the ones you want to spend your life studying. Although I took advantage of being working at my university museum when I was doing my biology career, I wish I had continued this practice after. The reason for this is that in today’s job market, being too focus can limit your job opportunities, especially in a country like Colombia in which research is not well paid.
My second advise is to get yourself a second career option and this can be directly related to my previous advise. Having skills, knowledge and passion about other things outside of science, like music, painting, crafting, languages or anything else can give you additional option when life get difficult and jobs are scarce.
And finally, learn about your finances early in life, specially because science jobs are not always permanent or well paid. Some of the people I know are as lucky as me to have family support, however that is not the case and I also had seen good professionals doing not so good thing or accepting jobs with ethical issues just to have money to feed their families.
So, although I had love my career more than I can express in a world like today’s with so much competition and lack of opportunities, it is useful to had a second career or at least a hobby that you can use to make you life easy and keep your soul free of ethical issues.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?
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Monkey Forest Tales: News from the field: samplings for our ornate titi monkey distribution project and Colombian squirrel monkey babies counts.

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In February, we continue our annual Colombian squirrel monkeys baby counts and we started our ornate titi monkey’s distribution project samplings in Upia- Meta rivers confluence and Metica river source. Although there were just a few days of sampling, work was intense and lots of distance were covered. Deforestation on both areas is widespread and monkeys are using living fences alongside primary, secondary and tertiary roads as corridors. Colombian squirrel monkeys are still having babies, with some females with infants of around one month and other still pregnant as usual for this species, in all sites visited. Ornate titi monkeys are more elusive up to now in our samplings with some local people reporting them occasionally in some areas but not in others.
During the first month of the year, Colombian Llanos had its drier season and with El Niño phenomenon, this month all rivers in the region had very low level, making navigability very difficult and access to some forest fragments near to rivers complicated by river or land, a challenge we had to sort during this month samplings.
During this field trip we also register red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus), black capped capuchins (Sapajus apella fatuellus), and crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous) using open areas and living fences. Some prints of capybaras were also recorded on Meta riverbanks. We were also fortunate to had great people helping us with our samplings, especially Stella, Jose, Sr. Vanegas and Francisco, who support several aspects of our samplings during this month.

If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== and our new journals in Amazon https://www.amazon.com/X-Carretero/dp/B0CWD1DBJM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.X-DZnsRxEDXfTBPZsuG4GiwWwBCqmoeCJ_WW-bEm_Z85wKyUyBvy76iMm0z4k4oY9YD81Pz4e_ZYHYz8QK7T3BNo_mX6d-Mo7FroQLkxo6yy0k6KPwMjP8GC27PVXa-39FSo87QCzagOOnEgz-IfS8ADg0gEc9feWAkXyRNpRpuqWEv9qnKE2ALCzsyAt4aM0O-PM4L6U1PSn1neUX7axw.vI1S0GofRHMSCqMV41jOdEmaxXHCJCHL6ya-uAHsxTo&dib_tag=se&keywords=X.+Carretero+Journal&qid=1709327306&sr=8-1
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Monkey Forest Tales: Women and girls in science celebration day

On February 11th it was women and girls in science celebration day, a day to increase awareness to all the wonderful girls and women who through our lives and history had make an impact in the world for us to be able to be whatever we want to be. Something that we usually don’t say, or at least I rarely said it, is that most of us who live the life we always dream to live, probably have a mother or some family member who overcome a lot of challenges and showed us that whatever was possible if you try it. So, thank you mom and aunt Julia for showing me that if I wanted I can get it, despite all the challenges life put in your way.
Over the years, several women and sometimes little girls had incentivized me to be better in what I do. Most of them had been students, volunteers, and colleagues of different ages and at different stages in their careers and life. But all of them have something in common, a certain combination of curiosity and fire for do anything possible to make their dreams come true. Curiosity to try and ask questions that other didn’t and a tenacity to continue despite many people telling them they cannot do it.
I had also been lucky to have many men in my life who supported me over the years and give me enough confidence to be able to do what I love the most in life, work with monkeys!! Starting with my father and then all my academic advisor who had been all man. To all of them thank you too.
Now that I had mention people who had inspired me and supported me, my message to all the girls and young women who dream to work in science is first to surround yourself with people who support you and motivate you, fine passion inside and outside of you, don’t give up and even when times looks a bit dark, there is always something or someone who appears in your life in the right moment. And finally, something that I hear once from Jane Goodall, “you’ll have to work hard, take advantage of opportunities and never give up” something that her mother told her when she was a little girl and tell her she wanted to go to Africa. This phrase had resonated with me over the years and that is why I still do what I love (see monkeys in their habitat, in case you had forgotten), even when sometimes it looks that I will need to give up, something appears, or someone gives me a hand an offers me a new opportunity that in some way keep me going.
Finally, to all students, volunteers and colleagues who had share part of your life with me, thank you for helping me to keep going…Happy Girls and Women in Science Day!!!
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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Monkey Forest Tales: Problem of common names

In today’s post we want to discuss a common practice that sometimes generates interpretation and identity problems in science, common names. Common names are the names that local people give to animals in a region or country. Sometimes those names came from other regions, countries or even continents as it’s the case of common name for our jaguar that usually is tiger. This is reflection of colonial times when Spanish people who arrive to America called jaguars “tigers” as it is a big cat as the original tiger of Asia. Some of these common names remains in our minds and cultures for centuries and changing these common names to more appropriate names for our species is not always easy. Our last example is one that have been changing over the years although there are areas in which jaguar are still called tigers.
But why we wanted to discuss about this? Our reason is because in this website and many publications product of all work done in this project had one of these confusing common names that we notice recently. As I mentioned several times in this website, I had been studying monkeys for over 25 years, during this time monkey’s taxonomy had changed over the last decade and with taxonomy some common names also changed to be more accurate to reflect that taxonomy. The case we are talking about is dusky titi monkey or ornate titi monkeys (Plecturocebus ornatus). In 1995 when I learned primate taxonomy this species was a subspecies of dusky titi monkeys, todays known as Callicebus moloch, a species from Peruvian Amazon very similar to another specie also called dusky titi Callicebus cupreus from Ecuatorian Amazon, from which Plecturocebus ornatus was a subspecies, until 2016. The reason for using this common name to different species is that at some point all these species were considered the same species, although they have different names in local languages. Therefore, when I started this project ornate titi monkeys were still dusky titi monkey until 2016, by Byrne and collaborators, when a new taxonomy for the whole subfamily Callicebinae.
So, as you see sometimes changing common names cost us a bit of time, but in order to be more precise and follow the IUCN red list classification in this website we are going to use ornate titi monkey as the common name to our endemic Zocay, as it is known in Spanish. A good practice in science is to be updated in taxonomy, even if the focus of your research is focus on other disciplines inside biology as this is a field in which changes are continuous and make exciting discoveries almost everyday.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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Monkey Forest Tales: It’s baby season again!

Today’s post is about the best part of my work, every year at the beginning of each year, my work and energy are focus on counting baby monkeys, especially Colombian squirrel baby monkeys. So as usual we start our year in Zocay Project by counting babies of Colombian squirrel monkeys, as well as ornate titi monkeys and Brumback night monkeys. All these species have babies between December and March.
The beginning of 2024 started with some new babies of all these species in San Martin, Cumaral and Villavicencio area. In following months, we also recount some of these groups as well as do our counting in Villanueva area. Also, we observed some of the older females in our Colombian squirrel monkey’s groups healthy and some seems to be pregnant and still reproducing.
But why is so important to us to count those babies? A way to know if a population is stable, growing or decreasing is by knowing how many babies born each year and more important how many of those babies survive that year and continue growing until they become adults and reproduce themselves. So as one of our main objectives is to know what is happening with monkey’s populations in the areas where we work, that is why the beginning of every year is so important for us. It is also important to do this counting every year because monkeys have long lives, therefore for a baby to grow to be an adult several years need to pass and you need be able to count and try to follow up those babies as many years as possible to be able to know what happens with their lives.
We also finished this month the field season from our collaborative project with Dr. Martha Ortiz about patch and landscape-scale effects on Brumback night monkey’s presence and abundance. Now it is time for our analysis part, more news on this project in following months.
We also started our logistic arrangements to our trips to areas that are limits of ornate titi distribution to confirm those limits and again we are grateful to Chalcraft Little Fund for their support to our work. We are also planning to expand our work on ornate titi monkeys as conservation for this species in the ground is highly need it. So, in following months we will give you more news about new activities and projects related with ornate titi monkeys and monkeys conservation, in general. Stay tuned and if you want to help, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our ornate titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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Monkey Forest Tales: Planning Zocay Project activities for 2024

Happy New Year to everyone!! In our first post of 2024, we want to let you know some of our plans for this new year. Zocay Project 20th birthday is this year, and we are very excited and grateful with all farmers and people who had helps us over the past two decades to make this project a success. So, we are planning a few surprises for all of you very soon!!!
We are also excited to announce that this year we continue with our project to improve our knowledge of Ornate titi monkey (Plecturocebus ornatus) distribution limits. We are grateful with our donors from Chalcraft Fund Primate Grant manage through Rewild. We are also grateful with all people from private reserves that had reach out to us reporting their observation of this beautiful species on their land. In the following months we will keep you updated with all new areas visited and all advances in this new project.
This year we also continue with our monitoring of primate populations in fragments of San Martín area as well as some areas in Villavicencio, Cumaral and Villanueva, with some of our first trips starting next week. We area starting Colombian squirrel monkey babies’ season again and babies of some other species had been reported recently too. In collaboration with Cumaral Biodiversa we will continue supporting their effort to monitor Brumback night monkeys (Aotus brumbacki) nest in their territory.
Hopefully this year will be also successful on new publications about our results that we expect will improve not only our knowledge of primate populations living in forest fragments but also some recommendations and conservation actions to better improve those populations. We also plan to participate the Latin American Congress of Primatology that this year will be in Colombia. Also, we hope to continue collaborating with Nature Trips to train local guides for primate watching in Vista Hermosa area.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with us at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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Monkey Forest Tales: Balance of Zocay Project activities in 2023 – Part 2: projects and collaborations (continuation)

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In today’s post we want to continue mentioning some of our collaborations and projects from 2023. This year also give us the opportunity to know and support an incredible nature tourist project lead by Cesar Angel and his company Nature Trips Colombia that is supporting nature tourism projects in Vista Hermosa area where ornate titi monkeys are used as an umbrella species to incentivize sustainable economic alternatives in an area that suffers from violence over the past decades.
Additionally we continue supporting Cumaral biodiversa and El Silencio farm in their effort to monitor and map Brumback night monkey’s nest in Cumaral town. We also support them in their efforts to learn more about the wildlife they have in their territory through camera traps.
A few days back, we also received great news for our project about the ornate titi monkey’s distribution. We received funds from Little Chalcraft Fund, manage by Rewild, to make specific surveys on the north, east and south part of ornate titi monkey distribution limits next year. So stay tuned in the following months for news on these trips and more ornate titi monkey (Plecturocebus ornatus) news.
We are also in conversations with two organizations at national and international level to increase our impact on primate conservation. More news on these collaborations in the following months. We are also reconnecting with El Caduceo reserve in San Martin to monitor primates there
Finally, this year had leave us with multiple learnings about the impact we can and must have on primates and their habitats as well as multiple new friendships, renewed collaborations and friendships and more plans for future years.
If you want to support our activities, please visit https://fineartamerica.com/art/xyomara+carretero or get in contact with as at xcarretero@gmail.com if you want to collaborate, donate or volunteer in our activities. You can also support our activities by buying our dusky titi monkeys stuff dolls https://www.instagram.com/p/Ctm_sEORvk8/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
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