Anthropogenic and Climatic Effects on the Distribution of Eulemur Species: An Ecological Niche Modeling Approach Jason M. Kamilar 1,2,3 & Stacey R. Tecot 4 Received: 16 January 2015 /Accepted: 19 August 2015 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract Several factors can influence primate distributions, including evolutionary history, interspecific competition, climate, and anthropogenic impacts. In Madagascar, several small spatial scale studies have shown that anthropogenic habitat modification affects the density and distribution of many lemur species. Ecological niche models can be used to examine broad-scale influences of anthropogenic impacts on primate distributions. In this study, we examine how climate and anthropogenic factors influ- ence the distribution of 11 Eulemur species using ecological niche models. Specifically, we created one set of models only using rainfall and temperature variables. We then created a second set of models that combined these climate variables with three anthropogenic factors: distance to dense settlements, villages, and croplands. We used MaxEnt to generate all the models. We found that the addition of anthropogenic variables improved the climate models. Also, most Eulemur species exhibited reduced predicted geographic distributions once anthropogenic factors were added to the model. Distance to dense settlements was the most important anthropogenic factor in most cases. We suggest that including anthropogenic variables in ecological niche models is important for understanding primate distributions, especially in regions with significant human impacts. In addition, we identify several Eulemur species that were most Int J Primatol DOI 10.1007/s10764-015-9875-8 Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10764-015-9875-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Jason M. Kamilar jkamilar@umass.edu 1 Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA 2 Graduate Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, USA 3 School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, USA 4 School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA