Phylogenetic structure in mandible morphometric data of platyrrhine monkeys (Infraorder Platyrrhini): Implications for phylogenetic inference among fossil species.

ROCATTI, GUIDO; ARISTIDE, LEANDRO; PEREZ, S. IVAN

La Primatología en Latinoamérica 2 / A Primatologia na America Latina 2

Ediciones IVIC. Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC).

Lugar: Caracas; Año: 2018; p. 39 - 45

The study of the origin and maintenance of diversity needs robust phylogenetic tree estimations. Here, we estimate the phylogenetic relationships among some extant platyrrhine species using molecular data and then compare the results with the mandible morphometric variation. For this, we use phylogenetic Maximum Likelihood and geometric morphometric methods. Our phylogenetic tree is similar to other molecular trees, displaying a closer phylogenetic relationship between Atelidae and Cebidae, and between Aotus and the Cebidae clade. The mandible shape variation matches overall with the currently postulated morphological tree, showing closer similarity between Atelidae and Pitheciidae, and between Aotus and the Pitheciidae clade. This supports the idea that a single gene or morphological structure could show discordant relationships at the deep divergence of platyrrhines. However, mandible shape variation can be used to identify the species phylogenetic position in the main platyrrhine clades, which has high relevance to study therelationships among fossil species.