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Systematics of the Lemuridae (Primates, Strepsirhini)

1988; Elsevier BV; Volume: 17; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0047-2484(88)90040-1

1095-8606

Colin P. Groves, Robert H. Eaglen,

Animal Behavior and Reproduction

In the past quarter-century, many studies of Madagascar lemurs have drawn attention to morphological, molecular, karyological, and behavioral similarities between gentle lemurs (genus Hapalemur) and ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta). The breadth and number of these observations have led us to re-evaluate the affinities of these taxa, and of the family Lemuridae as a whole. After reviewing the literature and examining museum specimens, we identified 32 characters which we consider particularly relevant for understanding the systematics of the Lemuridae. These characters were coded numerically and analyzed by various cladistic parsimony procedures. Our findings indicate that, as others have suggested, the genus Lepilemur is probably more closely related to the family Indriidae than it is to any extant lemurid taxon. For the remaining lemurids, the evidence favoring a special relationship between gentle and ring-tailed lemurs is striking, but not entirely convincing. A numerical procedure designed to construct confidence intervals on phylogenies, the bootstrap technique, indicates a lack of statistical support for any supraspecific grouping of lemurid taxa; the most likely cause for this negative finding is extensive parallel evolution. On the other hand, the analysis of numerous highly parsimonious phylogenies shows that the following supraspecific groups occur in a large majority of them: (1) the two species of Hapalemur; (2) the genus Hapalemur plus Lemur catta; (3) Varecia and the L. fulvus species-group; (4) Hapalemur plus Lemur plus Varecia; and (5) Lepilemur plus Indriidae. Because of the bootstrap results, we think it premature to alter formally the suprageneric taxonomy of the Lemuridae from presently accepted schemes. However, all of our analyses reinforce the fact that the Lemur fulvus species-group is highly distinctive by comparison to L. catta. For that reason we suggest the elevation of the fulvus group to the rank of genus, and we propose the name Petterus for it, with type P. fulvus. The incorporation of Petterus in the family Lemuridae, without including any suprageneric groupings, provides a way of indicating the present uncertainty about the phylogenetic affinities among its members.