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Ethnophoresy.

Similar to a species reintroduction, Ethnophoresy refers to the process by which primates are brought to areas beyond their home range by humans. As opposed to many reintroductions which may occur to restore populations of endangered species to the wild, ethnophoresy refers to introductions of primates unintentionally, often to island ecosystems.

A well-known example of ethnophorency is the barbary macaques of Gibraltar. Other examples include vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus [Chlorocebus] aethips [sabaeus]) introduced to islands around the Caribbean by European settlers, who brought them over as a source of food, pets, and trade on long journeys across the Atlantic. were released to Cape Verdes islands around 1462, when the islands were first discovered, surviving today on Santiago and Fofo (Dore) and also to Cayo Cantilles, a 3,4000-ha island off the coast of Cuba in 1984 and 77,700-ha Cayo Romano, an island in Cuba's Camaguey Archipelago in the early 1980s. The purpose of the release was also to establish a free-ranging colony from which monkeys could be harvested for biological research. There were were 50 founders, also from St. Kitts.This release was also managed by the Cuban Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnologia, and medio ambiente.

Rhesus macaques were brought to the Florida keys for biological research on Raccoon key, where a population still lives. They cause extensive damage to the keys' red and black mangroves and wildlife. Rhesus macaques also were translocated to Cayo Santiago for biomedical research.

Many primates were originally brought to Cuba (Borroto-Paez, R 2009. Invasive mammals in Cuba: an overview. Biological Invasions 11: 2279-2290). Patas monkeys were brought to Puerto Rico on the islands of Guayacan and Cuerva off the southwest coast between 1971 and 1979 as research subjects for studies that have since been shut down. The monkeys escaped through the mangrove swamps and established a viable population, along with rhesus macaques on the islands.

Mona monkeys were released on the island of Grenada between 1600 and 1899, likely originating from Sao Tome & Principe.

There are also groups of squirrel monkeys and other primates in Florida. Squirrel monkeys were released on the 14-ha hectare Bartlett estate in the 1940s or 60s by a social club. Furthermore, the silver springs monkeys were released in Silver springs, Florida along with rhesus macaques. Others were brought to Hawaii and Masterpiece Gardens, a tourist attraction in Lake Wales Florida in the 1960s to enhance tourism, growing to as many as a thousand in the 1980s.

Another example from around the world includes the introduction of the Common brown lemur to Comoros.

Impacts

Many of these primates cause harm to the island ecosystems where they live. For example, the rhesus macaques in Puerto rico, Cayo Santiago cause approximately US $1.5 million in agricultural losses annually. An example of this is crop raiding on the islands of the Caribbean including Barbados and St. Kitt's, where they have become agricultural threats and are dangerous to the local habitat. There are efforts to remove these monkeys, especially from the islands of St Martin and Tortola, to which they were brought in the 1970s. However, it is difficult to communicate the benefits of eradication of these animals from the islands

Cultural attachment

Many islanders express a strong cultural attachment to the monkeys, despite their nuisance presence. On Gibraltar, the monkeys proved a critical part of British cultural heritage, and many residents of Florida express similar sentiments to the populations established there. Many residents in Dania beach Florida feed the green vervet monkey s and like the tradition of having them nearby.