Meeting Abstract

P3.81  Sunday, Jan. 6  Drivers of facial diversity in strepsirrhine primates NOONAN, A*; SANTANA, S.E.; LYNCH ALFARO, J; ALFARO, M.E.; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Washington; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Los Angeles AndrewNoonan@mac.com

Strepsirrhine primates include a wide diversity of species such as lemurs, bushbabies, aye ayes and tarsiers, which are broadly distributed across Madagascar, continental Africa and Asia. Members of this clade exhibit a startling range of facial diversity though the factors underlying the evolution of this diversity remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigate if sociality and/or ecology can explain the relationship between the diversity in facial color complexity patterns and pigmentation of strepsirrhine primates. We collected detailed data on the facial features, life history, sociality and habitat across strepsirrhine primates, and used these data in phylogenetic comparative analyses to explore the relationship among facial diversity, social structure and ecology. The results of our study indicate that strepsirrhine species living in larger groups and strepsirrhine species living in higher degrees of sympatry with congeners have evolved more complex faces, suggesting a function of facial features in species and individual recognition. Moreover, we found some relationships between facial darkness and canopy density in some groups. Our results support the idea that facial coloration and complexity in strepsirrhine primates may have evolved through multiple selective pressures, including inter-and intraspecies recognition as well as ecological pressures.