Primates and Their Relatives in Phylogenetic Perspective

This book has the modest aim of bringing together methodological, theo retical, and empirical studies that bear on the phylogenetic placement of primates and their relatives, and continues a tradition started by Phylogeny of the Primates: A Multidisciplinary Approach (edited by W. P. Luckett and F. S. Szalay; Plenum Press, 1975) and The Comparative Biology and Evolutionary Rela tionships of Tree Shrews (edited by W. P. Luckett, Plenum Press, 1980). Although there are several recent compendia of studies of primate relationships, most of these are exclusively concerned with the internal arrangement of clades within the order, not with the place of primates and their relatives on the eutherian cladogram. Evolutionary theory predicts that primates must be more closely related to some non primate mammals than to others, but a continuing problem has been to find reliable procedures for recovering historical relationships among taxa. Before the 1970s, higher-level relationships among primates and euthe rian mammals that might be closely related to them were rarely treated in detail. Outstanding exceptions, like Le Gros Clark's Antecedents of Man, were just that-exceptions. (Clark himself essentially stopped with making a case for tree shrews; he did not, for example, explore whether bats and colugos were also related to primates. ) In the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of cladistic techniques and advances in molecular methods began to transform primate systematics.

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This book has the modest aim of bringing together methodological, theo retical, and empirical studies that bear on the phylogenetic placement of primates and their relatives, and continues a tradition started by Phylogeny of the Primates: A Multidisciplinary Approach (edited by W. P. Luckett and F. S. Szalay; Plenum Press, 1975) and The Comparative Biology and Evolutionary Rela tionships of Tree Shrews (edited by W. P. Luckett, Plenum Press, 1980). Although there are several recent compendia of studies of primate relationships, most of these are exclusively concerned with the internal arrangement of clades within the order, not with the place of primates and their relatives on the eutherian cladogram. Evolutionary theory predicts that primates must be more closely related to some non primate mammals than to others, but a continuing problem has been to find reliable procedures for recovering historical relationships among taxa. Before the 1970s, higher-level relationships among primates and euthe rian mammals that might be closely related to them were rarely treated in detail. Outstanding exceptions, like Le Gros Clark's Antecedents of Man, were just that-exceptions. (Clark himself essentially stopped with making a case for tree shrews; he did not, for example, explore whether bats and colugos were also related to primates. ) In the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of cladistic techniques and advances in molecular methods began to transform primate systematics.

Résumé
Investigates the relationships of primates at the ordinal and higher classificatory levels from a variety of interdisciplinary viewpoints. This book examines the origin and evolution of gliding in early Cenozoic Dermoptera, the ontogeny of the tympanic floor in Archontans, and the role of the neurosciences in primate evolutionary biology.

Contenu
1 The Importance of Methods: Archontan Phylogeny and Cladistic Analysis of Morphological Data.- 2 Origin and Evolution of Gliding in Early Cenozoic Dermoptera (Mammalia, Primatomorpha).- 3 The Implications of the Propatagial Muscles of Flying and Gliding Mammals for Archontan Systematics.- 4 Ontogeny of the Tympanic Floor and Roof in Archontans.- 5 Developmental Evidence from the Fetal Membranes for Assessing Archontan Relationships.- 6 Cranioskeletal Morphology of Archontans, and Diagnoses of Chiroptera, Volitantia, and Archonta.- 7 A Molecular Examination of Archontan and Chiropteran Monophyly.- 8 A Molecular View of Primate Supraordinal Relationships from the Analysis of Both Nucleotide and Amino Acid Sequences.- 9 Phylogeny through Brain Traits: Interordinal Relationships among Mammals Including Primates and Chiroptera.- 10 The Role of the Neurosciences in Primate Evolutionary Biology: Historical Commentary and Prospectus.- 11 Summary.- Systematic Index.- Author and Subject Index.