ATLANTIC‐PRIMATES: a dataset of communities and occurrences of primates in the Atlantic Forests of South America

Primatesplay an important role in ecosystem functioning and offer critical insights into human evolution, biology, behavior, and emerging infectious diseases. There are 26 primatespecies in the Atlantic Forests of South America, 19 of them endemic. We compiled a dataset of 5,472 georeferenced locations of 26 native and 1 introduced primatespecies, as hybrids in the genera Callithrixand Alouatta. The dataset includes 700 primatecommunities, 8,121 single species occurrences and 714 estimates of primatepopulation sizes, covering most natural forest types of the tropical and subtropical Atlantic Forest of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina and some other biomes. On average, primatecommunities of the Atlantic Forest harbor 2 ± 1 species (range = 1-6). However, about 40% of primatecommunities contain only one species. Alouatta guariba (N = 2,188 records) and Sapajus nigritus(N = 1,127) were the species with the most records. Callicebus barbarabrownae(N = 35), Leontopithecus caissara(N = 38), and Sapajus libidinosus(N = 41) were the species with the least records. Recorded primatedensities varied from 0.004 individuals/km2 (Alouatta guariba at Fragmento do Bugre, Parana, Brazil) to 400 individuals/km2 ( Alouatta carayain Santiago, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). Our dataset reflects disparity between the numerous primatecensus conducted in the Atlantic Forest, in contrast to the scarcity of estimates of population sizes and densities. With these data, researchers can develop different macroecologicaland regional level studies, focusing on communities, populations, species co-occurrence and distribution patterns. Moreover, the data can also be used to assess the consequences of fragmentation, defaunation, and disease outbreaks on different ecological processes, such as trophic cascades, species invasion or extinction, and community dynamics. There are no copyright restrictions. Please cite this Data Paper when the data are used in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us of how they are using the data.