The following post is a departure from my usual reporting on an interesting primate related tidbit of research. I’ll be posting about how I have thought about how to study primate brain evolution research. These are just ideas I have brainstormed. It is very probable that people are doing this out in their respective labs [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Phylogenetics’
May 20, 2007
Digital Morphology Database and Primatology
For you osteology buffs out there, I want to let you know about the Digital Morphology database, if you don’t already know about it. I actually didn’t know about it myself, until I read about an extinct platyrrhine, Tremacebus harringtoni, from Afarensis’ ‘know your primate‘ periodical. The Digital Morphology (DigiMorph) database currently has about 400 [...]
April 12, 2007
Science magazine unveils the Macaque Genome
Science just published a whole slew of papers, posters, news articles, and the like on the Rhesus Macaque because the macaque genome, the first monkey genome to be sequenced, has been unveiled today.
I haven’t read all of the content in this special issue, but from what I have skimmed so far it’s all focused on [...]
February 24, 2007
Reassessing the time at which human-chimp lineages diverged
A new statistical calculation called the hidden Markov model has been applied to four regions of the human, chimpanzee and gorilla genomes as reported in the PLoS Genetics journal.
But, before I jump into a discussion of the implications of this paper, let me explain to those unfamiliar with the hidden Markov model that it was,
“developed [...]
February 20, 2007
A new species of gray-cheeked mangabey announced
Professor of Bioanthropology, Dr. Colin Groves, of the Australian National University’s Department of Anthropology has spent sometime studying a population of gray-cheeked mangabey (Lophocebus albigena). And his time spent studying this population has not been in vain. He actually found a novel trait in the skulls of this population of mangabeys, unique enough to be [...]
February 10, 2007
Male violence towards female chimpanzees, in regards to promiscuity
Part of the blogosphere that normally I keep under my radar has been carrying a lively discussion about a new paper from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London on domestic violence among chimpanzees in the wild. The paper is aptly titled, “Male coercion and the costs of promiscuous mating for female chimpanzees” but [...]
January 23, 2007
New analysis of Paleocene skeletons and the evolutionary history of early plesiadapiforms primates
If you’re interested in paleoprimatology and phylogeny at all, a new paper in PNAS titled, “New Paleocene skeletons and the relationship of plesiadapiforms to crown-clade primates” has just come out. If you don’t know Plesiadapiforms are archaic primates who lived in the Paleocene. The study focuses mostly on the initial divergence of primates, and uses [...]
January 4, 2007
Variation in brain size and ecology in Orangutans
John Hawks expands on a paper that I introduced several months ago. The paper has been online for a while but has appeared in the January 2007 edition of the Journal of Human Evolution, it is titled, “Variation in brain size and ecology in Pongo.” Hawks briefly criticizes a flaw in the experimental setup of [...]
December 20, 2006
Primate communication: Gibbon song deters predators
Today’s interesting press release from the University of St Andrews calls attention to a paper on the singing behavior of gibbons as a mechanism to ward off predators in addition to mating practices. Esther Clarke, Klaus Zuberbuhler, both of the University of St Andrews and Ulrich Reichard, of the Max Planck Institute observed the [...]
July 21, 2006
NHGRI to sequence the Gibbon genome
The white-cheeked gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys) will be the next species of primate to get its genome sequenced by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, accoridng to ScienceNOW Daily News. After decoding the human and chimpanzee sequence, the NHGRI has seen how the benefits of related genomes have helped medicine and other [...]
