Perspectives on primate color vision

Abstract

This chapter is an attempt to sketch the evolution of the primate lineage in the broadest possible ecological terms. Inevitably, it is based partly on the ideas of others. At minimum, any novelty that we can offer probably derives from insights gleaned from fieldwork on living primates. From that field backdrop, we extrapolate to other epochs. At maximum, this account is likely to be thought to be completely beyond the bounds of acceptable speculation. For this excess, however, we are unrepentant and hope that at least some of the ideas possess credibility. Our general focus is on correlating the evolution of primates with that of angiosperms, interpreting this association via diet. We take our lead here from various sources, but the influences of Cartmill (1972) and Sussman (1991) have been very strong in this regard, as will be obvious. Our explanations are simplistic and based on a likely sequence of sensory cues that animals use to find foods, starting from color vision, which acts most efficiently at longer distances, 5-25 m or so (Janson and Di Bitetti, 1997), to those acting in or around the mouth-like texture and taste (Dominy et al., 2001). © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007.