Back to the future: A synthesis of strepsirrhine systematics

The strepsirrhine primates, defined here as living tooth-combed primates, their immediate ancestor, and all of its descendants, are a diverse assemblage of mammals, viewed by some as exemplars of the richness of evolutionary innovation and by others as uninteresting "primitive" primates. Fortunately, the former view has taken precedence in recent years. The Strepsirrhini have been central to numerous debates touching on key issues such as the congruence of phylogeny to biogeography, the reliability of morphological characters for phylogeny reconstruction, and the relationship of living lineages to fossil lineages. Thanks to important theoretical and methodological advances, particularly within the arena of genetics, a robust picture of strepsirrhine phylogeny is emerging that casts light on these and numerous other evolutionary questions.

Duke Scholars

Author Anne Daphne Yoder Biology