Talk:Taxonomy of lemurs

Split and review

This article has been split off from the featured article Evolutionary history of lemurs due to issues of size. I will be making minor changes to ensure that the article is still comprehensive and properly stands alone. In the meantime, I will be running it through WP:GAN as a precautionary review. – VisionHolder « talk » 23:42, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

History of taxonomy

The current titel could be interpreted as meaning the history of lemurs told in a taxonomic way. How about changing to History of taxonomy of lemurs? --Ettrig (talk) 10:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

For me, I don't like the repeated "of". Other titles I considered were "Taxonomy of lemurs" or "Taxonomy and phylogeny of lemurs". Do you prefer either of those? Also, I'd want to solicit some more opinions before I change it. – VisionHolder « talk » 12:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

"History of lemur taxonomy"? Or perhaps just "Taxonomy of lemurs"—any account of their taxonomy is going to have historical data. Ucucha 12:35, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

"History of lemur taxonomy" is much better and "History of" can be skipped if if this is not limited to history. --Ettrig (talk) 13:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to stay consistent after a back-and-forth dispute over the name of the article Evolutionary history of lemurs. It used to be "Lemur evolutionary history". Honestly, it all boils down to opinion. So unless there are strong objections based on good, solid reasons, I'll probably go with "Taxonomy of lemurs". – VisionHolder « talk » 14:12, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Misleading notes

The "Notes"section is mildly misleading: the way it is placed implies that it includes notes fro the entire article,but clearly it was only ever intended to accompany the table. How about putting them in a table footer, like so (table simplified for example):

Lemur species and subspecies count by year and genus

	1931 Schwarz		1982 Tattersall		1994 Mittermeier et al.		2005 Groves		2006 Mittermeier et al.		2010 Mittermeier et al.
genus	species	subspecies	species	subspecies	species	subspecies	species	subspecies	species	subspecies	species	subspecies
Totals	21	26	20	29	32	25	59	14	68	5	97	6
	38		42		50		67		71		101

As a sidenote, the formatting of the table could be easily and greatly simplified (which I don't mind doing myself). Circéus (talk) 17:55, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I suppose it could include notes from the entire article; all notes just happen to be from that table. Ucucha 18:05, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Ucucha said it perfectly. Anyway, the table concludes the article and the notes immediately follow, so I don't really see an issue. – VisionHolder « talk » 19:40, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Taxonomy of lemurs/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Ucucha 20:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

• "both through the discovery of new species and the elevation of existing subspecies to full species status"—and also the recognition of previously known populations that were not even distinct subspecies to species level, if I'm not mistaken.

  Thanks. Let me know if the change reads okay. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• 1753 should be 1758, shouldn't it? If I recall correctly, we looked at the 1753 edition and found that it didn't contain any lemurs.

  Good catch. Fixed. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "the populations of all species have decreased"—even the species that got introduced to the Comoros?

  We're talking about species populations, not localized populations. There are no distinct species on the Comoros. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  True, but species that got introduced to the Comoros presumably had their populations grow (perhaps not enough to offset habitat loss in Madagascar itself). Well, we'll just let it be. Ucucha 12:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  That may be true, but I have never seen anything in the literature to that effect. Conservation drives a lot of research, and most are concerned with preservation of their native habitat. I just don't think I would have any good sources, except maybe the IUCN Red List. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• Have you tried replacing as many cites to LoM2 as possible with LoM3 cites? Better to cite the last edition.

  Done. Some references cannot be replaced, though. Comments made in the "Introduction" section, for instance, may not be made again in later editions. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "naturalists and explorers, such as Alfred Grandidier and Alphonse Milne-Edwards."—I'm not sure, but I thought A. Milne-Edwards was also rather a museum systematist

  I've removed him from the list, because the sources treat him as a co-author if at all. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• If there are multiple possible phylogenies for lemurs, why does the cladogram show only one possibility?

  Especially since it fails to name which of the two it describes. Circéus (talk) 19:37, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

  I originally added one because my talks with Dr. Godfrey and Dr. Yoder suggested that recent research was resulting in some agreement, and the (peer-reviewed) cladogram shown favored that agreement. Another problem is that one cladogram includes subfossil lemur families and the other does not. What are your thoughts about having two cladograms in the article, one with eight lemur families and the other with five? I really don't want to omit the subfossil lemurs, but at the same time, listing them requires giving one phylogeny preference over another. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  If a new, more inclusive study gets published, we can use their cladogram, but in the meantime, it'll be better to give both, I think. Ucucha 12:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  I will be working on this. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  Lol! As soon as I get done adding both competing phylogenies, Dr. Godfrey sends a recent publication that has worked out a new phylogeny based on both Orlanda et al. and Horvath et al. In fact, it's identical to the old cladogram I had. See DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.21236 and let me know if you want me to restore the old cladogram and mention the new one in the text. – VisionHolder « talk » 18:07, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "Second, the divergence of the remaining families occurred approximately 42 mya;"—what split is that? Between the aye-aye and the rest or the split among the non-aye-aye lemurs? If the latter, "remaining" is wrong; if the "former", the argument doesn't make sense.

  Let me know if it reads better now. You were right—"remaining" was used incorrectly. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• In "Genus-level classification", shouldn't you also mention Pachylemur (included in Lemur until c. 1979) and Babakotia (first named in 1990)? If you want to expand, there is of course a large number of old and weird genus-level classifications; Gray (1870) for example placed all cheirogaleids in Lepilemur (but corrected that in the appendix).

  Babakotia wasn't a "change" (with species being moved out of an existing genus), which was the point of that list. As for Pachylemur, I just need to find a reference that talks about the shift. If needed, I guess I can cite Lamberton directly... As for the suggested expansion, do you feel that is necessary in order to meet the comprehensiveness requirement at FAC? I'm a little worried such work might come across more as original research. – VisionHolder « talk » 02:00, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  Well, the recognition of a new genus is still a change in genus-level classification—the list of genera changes. You also talk about newly discovered species in the species-level section. I think The Primate Fossil Record discusses Pachylemur. Lamberton only made it a subgenus, and it's been considered a genus since the 1960s or 1970s, and has also been included in Varecia in some classifications. Ucucha 12:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  Good point. They've been added. I didn't discuss Lepilemur/Megaladapis because it was a temporary change that was reverted, but if you feel it deserves a second mention in the article, just let me know. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "The first large wave of new lemur species descriptions came in 2001"—this may depend on your definition of "wave", but in 2000, we already got a lot of additional Cheirogaleus and Microcebus species.

  Good catch. Let me know if the added text is sufficient. – VisionHolder « talk » 03:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "but which still disperses and interbreeds with nearby populations."—or which did so until recently? I can imagine that it is now totally isolated due to habitat loss, but perhaps the source does not talk about that.

  To be honest, I don't know... and none of my sources (that I can find) talks about the effects of habitat loss. In LoM3, the map shows some ?'s around its range, so I don't know how much contiguous forest is has access to. – VisionHolder « talk » 03:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "In the case of the true lemurs, the diploid number ranges from 2n=48 to 2n=60 while the individual chromosome sizes vary considerably"—why are true lemurs mentioned here, as opposed to other groups that have been studied karyologically?

  At the time, I did not have access to Tattersall's volume, and I believe none of my other sources at the time mentioned the karyotypes of each lemur species/genus/family. Basically, I was restricted to one source, and that was the information it provided. Now that I have more information, should I cover it more in-depth? Or would a table suffice? – VisionHolder « talk » 03:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  This occurs in the context of a discussion of species-level taxonomy, so I think you'd best give examples where karyology helped in determining taxonomy. I think that occurred in Lepilemur principally, perhaps also in other genera. Ucucha 12:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

  I wasn't quite sure how to add this, plus most karyotype studies are buried in other molecular studies, so it would take a lot of digging through the research to see which ones used it. I've added an example to that paragraph. Let me know if that's good, and if not, I can do some more looking around. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

• "By far the most explosive growth in species numbers"—depends on how you define "explosive growth", but compared to 1994, species number in Avahi has increased more in relative terms (4.5x) than in Lepilemur (3.7x). Microcebus and Lepilemur do of course have the largest absolute increases.

  I have mentioned that is was in terms of absolute numbers. Feel free to re-word if you see the need. – VisionHolder « talk » 03:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Ucucha 20:42, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

• I think you have room for a bit more illustration with some pictures of nice lemurs. Ucucha 20:49, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

  I will definitely add some more pictures once I have the cladograms done. – VisionHolder « talk » 16:51, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your fixes; I will now pass the article. Ucucha 13:59, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Comments

• In the sentence "However, relevant genetic studies nearly unanimously place cheirogaleids within the lemuriform clade and Groves himself, who had promoted the cheirogaleid-lorisiform relationship in a 1974 paper, by 2001 regarded the idea as refuted.", is there a reason for the "nearly"? I don't have Groves's book, but the other two sources don't talk about genetic evidence that doesn't place cheirogaleids within lemurs. Also, it may be better to drop the cite to Yoder et al. (1996), since it doesn't discuss this point specifically (as far as I can tell) and is now prehistoric for a molecular study.

  At the time, it sounded more controversial, since papers that I found about these fossil species seemed relatively new. From my interactions with the experts and from what I've seen of the more recent literature, I think you're right. I'll remove "nearly" as well as the Yoder ref. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:48, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

  Thanks for fixing both of those. The fossil studies are indeed fairly recent, but of course they are not "genetic studies". Ucucha 07:23, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

• Yoder (2007) says LoM1 had 33 species (32 in this article) and LoM2 "more than 70" (68 here). Ucucha 21:26, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

  Yoder was wrong—I just checked both LoM1 & LoM2. I think I have an email to this effect from Yoder. If I remember correctly, I asked her about this discrepancy, and I think she said that she just did a quick count. Anyway, I'm not sure why I kept it as a reference. I've adjusted that reference as well as the others so that they point to specific pages that give the number of species or taxa, instead of a range of pages where all the species are listed. – VisionHolder « talk » 22:48, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Navigation template

Was thinking I would find a lemurs navigation template at the end of the article. Regards, SunCreator ^(talk) 02:07, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry... I missed this post and replied to your suggestion at the FAC. Please check there. – VisionHolder « talk » 03:46, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Minor question about thumb vs. hallux

In the "Suprageneric classification" section we can read "By emphasizing its primate features, such as its postorbital bar, stereoscopic vision, and opposable hallux,...; opposable hallux link to thumb, but hallux usually it refers to the big toe of the foot. Then, ¿aye-aye have opposable hallux or opposable thumbs? --Furado (talk) 08:54, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Good catch. The source talks about the hallux, so I'm not sure why I linked the pollex (thumb). Anyway, aye-ayes, like the rest of the lemurs, have pseudo-opposable thumbs—it has to do with its range of movement. – VisionHolder « talk » 15:48, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

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Horvath v Orlando v newer?

I've been working on a whole Order of Primates phylogenic tree in User:UtherSRG/primate_clade. Quite the endeavor, to be sure. When I got to Lemuroidea, I knew I'd have some issues. For now, I'm using a toggle to display both Horvath's and Orlando's phylogenies (though without the extinct taxa). I made an effort to also include the intrageneric phylogenies. Doing some research, I found a number of papers, but most of them are just using Horvath or Orlando to lay things out. Fair enough, those papers help show that both Horvath and Orlando are reasonably equally accepted understandings. Since they were both 14 years ago, I figured to keep digging, and I found a paper from 2016 that supports extinct taxa and also updates the family phylogenies. Here's their layout and reference.

Lemuroid Phylogeny

Phylogeny from Herrera & Dávalos 2016 Lemuroidea  Daubentoniidae Daubentonia †Megaladapidae Megaladapis Lepilemuridae Lepilemur Cheirogaleidae Phaner Cheirogaleus Allocebus Mirza Microcebus Lemuridae †Pachylemur Varecia Lemur Hapalemur Eulemur †Archaeolemuridae †Hadropithecus †Archaeolemur Indriidae Indri †Paleopropithecidae Avahi + Propithecus †Paleopropithecidae †Babakotia †Mesopropithecus †Archaeoindris †Palaeopropithecus Avahi Propithecus   Toggle genus display

There's some good and some bad here. First, the results seem to be a compromise between Horvath and Orlando. The Lepilemuridae + Cheirogaleidae clade is retained from Horvath, and the Lemuridae + Indriidae clade is retained from Orlando, along with the intermixing of the extinct families in that clade, with the exception of moving Megaladapis out to be a sister to all but Daubentonia. Also, Hapalemur is shown to be monophyletic when Prolemur simus is included, simius being shown to not be sister to Lemur catta, but that L. catta is sister to Hapalemur + Prolemur simus, so simus should not have been removed from Hapalemur.

The bad: When including the extinct taxa, Indriidae is paraphyletic, but Herrera doesn't make any recommendations as to erecting a new family (Avahiidae probably as Propithecidae is taken), leaving us with no resolution but to discuss Indriidae's paraphyleticism. (Paraphyleticness? I like coining new words...or is it paraphyly? I think that's it.) However, this does at least resolve the trichotomy in Orlando.

I've not taken the time, but it looks like this work has been cited nearly 100 times, so perhaps this phylogeny has taken root over the other two? Might it be time to switch things up, or should we just add this to the list of competing phylogenies? I'll place a pointer to this talk on some of the other pages that are relevant.

References

UtherSRG (talk) 13:42, 23 September 2022 (UTC)