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  PlanetArk 12 May 06
 New Monkey Species is More Unique Than Thought
 Story by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON - A new species of monkey identified in Tanzania's highlands last year is an even more remarkable find than thought -- it is a new genus of animal, scientists said on Thursday.

The new monkey, at first called the highland mangabey but now known as kipunji, is more closely related to baboons than to mangabey monkeys, but in fact deserves its own genus and species classification, the researchers reported in the journal Science.

So they have re-named it Rungwecebus kipunji, and it is the first new genus of a living primate from Africa to be identified in 83 years.

"This is exciting news because it shows that the age of discovery is by no means over," said William Stanley, mammal collection manager at The Field Museum in Chicago, which has a dead specimen of the grayish-brown monkey.

"Finding a new genus of the best-studied group of living mammals is a sobering reminder of how much we have to learn about our planet's biodiversity," added Link Olson of the University of Alaska Museum, who worked with Stanley and others on the report.

Scientific classification arranges plants and animals along a hierarchy meant to illustrate how closely things are related to one another. Swedish botanist Carl von Linne, often known as Linnaeus, devised the system used as the basis for modern taxonomy -- class, order, family, genus, species. Humans, for instance, belong to the Mammalia class, the primate order, the hominid family, the genus Homo and the species sapiens -- Homo sapiens for short. T

he new African monkey, whose discovery was reported in Science almost precisely a year ago, was originally placed in the genus Lophocebus, commonly known as mangabeys. Rare and shy, it was identified only by photographs.

But then a farmer trapped one and it died and scientists could get a close look, including doing some DNA testing. Olson's genetic analysis showed the monkey is most closely related to baboons in the genus Papio, and not to mangabeys.

"Had we gotten these surprising results based on a single gene, we'd have been pretty skeptical, but each of the genes we analyzed either firmly supported the grouping of Kipunji with baboons or failed to support a close relationship between Kipunji and other mangabeys," Olson said in a statement.

An adult Kipunji is about 3 feet (90 cm) tall with a long tail, long grayish-brown fur, a black face, hands and feet. Adults make a distinctive, loud, low-pitched "honk-bark" call. They live in mountainside trees at elevations of up to 8,000 feet (2,400 metres) and eat leaves, shoots, flowers, bark, fruit, lichen, moss and invertebrates.

The last new genus of African monkey to be named was Allen's swamp monkey, discovered in 1907 but not recognized as a new genus until 1923.

"To find, in the 21st century, an entirely new species of large monkey living in the wild is surprising enough. To find one that can be placed in a new genus, and that sheds new light on the evolutionary history of the monkeys of Africa and Eurasia as a whole is truly remarkable," said John Oates, a professor of Anthropology at Hunter College in New York.

"This discovery also reinforces the view that mountains in southern Tanzania have played an important -- and until recently unexpected -- role as a refuge for many species long extinct elsewhere."

BBC 11 May 06
New genus of African monkey found
By Rebecca Morelle BBC News science reporter

The monkey is found in two high-altitude remote locations in Tanzania: the Rungwe-Livingstone forest in the Southern Highlands and the Ndundulu Forest in the Udzungwa Mountains.

Known locally as Kipunji, it stands at about 90cm (3ft) tall, is grey-brown in colour with off-white fur on its stomach and on the tip of its long curly tail, and has a crest of long hair on the top of its head. Adults have a distinctive call, described as a "honk-bark".

Better tests

When scientists spotted the animals in 2005, they originally placed them in the Lophocebus genus, commonly known as managabeys, but they were only able to study them from photographs.

However, the discovery of a dead Kipunji in a farmer's trap, meant more extensive genetic and morphological tests could take place.

Tim Davenport, lead author of the paper, who is from the Wildlife Conservation Society and is based in Tanzania, said: "We first came across the monkey a couple of years ago - the realisation that it was a new species was really exciting. "Since then we knew it would only be a matter of time before we got hold of a dead animal - because they are hunted - and once we had and we started looking at it more closely, we realised it was a new genus. That was just incredible - it is something that really doesn't happen that often."

Bill Stanley, an author on the paper, and mammal collections manager at the Field Museum, Chicago, US, said hearing the news that the monkey belonged to a new genus "sent shivers down my spine". "Simply put, the genetics said that it was closely related to baboons, but the skull wasn't anything like a baboon. The conclusions we drew from the genetic and morphological data, meant that it had to be named as a new genus."

An enigmatic monkey

Mr Stanley said one of the reasons why the monkey, until recently, remained a mystery to science was because of its reclusive nature. "They live in trees for the most part, they rarely come to the ground - and when they are in the trees they remain relatively hidden. This coupled with the fact that the places where the Kipunji are known are infrequently visited by outsiders is what probably led to them being unknown for so long."

But although the enigmatic Kipunji has just been described, it is already under threat, say the authors.

"At the moment we are doing a census, but the Kipunji will almost certainly number less than 1000 in total," Tim Davenport told the BBC News website. "There is a very small population in Ndundulu, but that is only two or three groups. In Mount Rungwe, where there are more, the forest is heavily disturbed. It is logged and it isn't managed. That couples with the fact that the monkey is hunted - they raid crops - and people set traps to protect their crops."

Bill Stanley agreed: "The bottom line is they are living in a small area of forest that is increasing being utilised for human needs, and the ramifications of that human utilisation could have a serious effect on the remaining population."

The new genus is now being considered for the IUCN red list of endangered species.

Evolutionary steps

Jonathan Kingdon, a biological anthropologist of Oxford University, commented: "The geneticists have shown that the closest relative of this rather slender, mainly tree-dwelling monkey is the hefty, mainly ground-dwelling baboon. Indeed of all the primates known it is the baboon's closest relative.

"The evolution of this unique monkey from a baboon and not a finely tuned lineage that was already "monkey" offers us a unique opportunity to understand the evolution of monkeys in Africa. "And the most likely reason for baboon and not monkey ancestry is that the Southern Highlands were separated from the great primate communities of central Africa by Lakes Tanganyika and Rukwa."

But Professor Colin Groves, a biological anthropologist from Australian National University, Canberra, was more cautious about the research. "I'm not certain if this is a new genus. I'm unsure of the molecular analysis - when I look at the phylogenetic tree (a diagram of the evolutionary relationship of a groups of organisms) there are aspects of it are quite different those that other people have generated. I would like to see them explore their DNA tree much much more."
links
New Monkey Species Discovered in East Africa
By John Roach National Geographic News website, 19 May 05

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