on the Primate Community of Java, Indonesia

Abstract Unlike many other tropical regions where large-scale habitat loss and habitat fragmentation is a recent phenomenon, deforestation on the island of Java, Indonesia, dates back to the fi rst millennium AD. Today forest remains as numerous isolated patches, covering less than 10 % of the island. This makes it an excellent area to study the effect of forest fragmentation in long-lived animals, such as pri-mates. I surveyed 31 forest fragments, ranging from 1 to 1,300 km 2, to assess the primate community composition. Fragments held between one and fi ve species. Excluding the dry easternmost part of the island, there was a signifi cant relationship between species number and fragments size, with a z-value (slope) of 0.20. A nest-edness analysis showed the composition of the different fragments to be highly ordered, with smaller fragments comprising subsets of larger ones. True rainforest species, such as the Javan gibbon ( Hylobates moloch), are the fi rst species to disap-pear after isolation. Based on these analyses the minimum fragment size for an area to harbour the entire Javan primate community is between 50 and 400 km 2. The close relationship between fragment size, primate number, and rainforest depen