Monkey business: specimen of new species shakes up family tree.A species of Tanzanian monkey first identified last year may actually require a separate genus, says an international research team. It would be the first new genus for monkeys in 79 years. Last year, the rare, reclusive monkey was classified as a mangabey mangabey: see monkey. and named Lophocebus kipunji (SN: 5/21/05, p. 324). The two research groups that named it had worked from field observations and photographs but didn't have a specimen for anatomical and genetic analysis. Since then, Tim R.B. Davenport of the Wildlife Conservation Society's branch in Tanzania, one of the original namers, received a kipunji cadaver cadaver /ca·dav·er/ (kah-dav´er) a dead body; generally applied to a human body preserved for anatomical study.cadav´ericcadav´erous ca·dav·er n. from a farmer's trap. Its body characteristics and DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. place the species in a new genus, located on the family tree close to baboons, Davenport and his collaborators report in an upcoming Science. "This will, of course, generate some controversy" says Davenport's collaborator Link Olson of the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks, who analyzed the DNA. Taxonomists have often split and revised genera, but the last new monkey genus was named in 1927: Oreonax, a type of woolly monkey. Last year, Davenport's team and a group including Trevor Jones of Udzungwa Mountain National Park happened upon kipunjis in separate forests. They heard about each other's work only when a member of each team happened to meet in a bar. Last August, a farmer near Mount Rungwe found a dead kipunji in a trap he set for animals raiding his maize field. Davenport sought advice on specimen handling from mammalogist mam·mal·o·gy n. The branch of zoology that deals with mammals. [mamma(l) + -logy.] mam William T. Stanley of Chicago's Field Museum. Stanley was doing fieldwork near an island village when his cell phone received scraps of text messages from Davenport. "I was running around this soccer field on the edge of the Indian Ocean trying to get a signal," he says. Stanley flew to Tanzania and with the biologists there distributed specimen samples to labs in Tanzania and the United States. Olson reported that the five sections of kipunji DNA that he analyzed put the animal closer to baboons than to mangabeys mangabeys dark-colored, long-snouted Old World monkeys with a wide distribution and common as zoo specimens, e.g. crested mangabey (Cercocebus albigena). . But when researchers compared the young male with baboons in the Field Museum's collection, they concluded that it didn't fit well among baboons, says Stanley. Because the animal's genetics argues against mangabeys and the monkey doesn't look like a baboon baboon, any of the large, powerful, ground-living monkeys of the genus Papio, also called dog-faced monkeys. Five subspecies live in Africa, with one species extending into the Arabian peninsula. , the researchers proposed the new genus: Rungwecebus. Todd Disotell of New York University New York University, mainly in New York City; coeducational; chartered 1831, opened 1832 as the Univ. of the City of New York, renamed 1896. It comprises 13 schools and colleges, maintaining 4 main centers (including the Medical Center) in the city, as well as the (NYU NYU New York University NYU New York Undercover (TV show) ) finds the proposal "extraordinarily premature." For example, he says that the database sequences Olson used need updating. NYU primatologist Clifford Jolly, who has studied baboon evolution, is likewise skeptical. However, he says that if the new family tree turns out to be right, kipunjis could be interesting survivors of an ancient lineage. |
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