Range extension of both rare woolly monkey and the tree that provided its food!

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There is an interesting story associated to this paper. Colin Taylor – now famous for being the only PC on the Sicily Islands with a book (2016) and huge twitter following – and Paul Toyne were cutting a trial in the jungle when they heard a troupe of monkeys above in the emergent trees. It turned out to be several woolly monkeys. The adults then started to throw fruit the size of a peach at us, probably to warn us off because they had small young with them. The fruit was collected together with leaf and bark samples from the tree and  sent them to Kew Gardens for identification. A few months later Professor Terry Pennington replied writing that it was the first record for this tree species – a sapotaceae – in Ecuador. It had previously been only found between Costa Rica and Colombia. So if the monkey had not thrown the fruit the discovery would never have been made!

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