Introduction 1
Our goal in this chapter is to review recent research on the ecology of Madagascar's extinct lemurs, with particular attention to how strongly these species resembled their still-extant relatives. The literature on the ecology of lemurs is replete with proclamations regarding their special adaptations. These include hypometabolism torpor in some , sperm competition or other forms of male-male competition for mates that involve relatively low agonism, small group size, seasonal breeding,...
Ecology
The lifeways not to mention the identities of the earliest primates have been much debated. But the fossil record has long shown that the basic package of prosimian strepsirhine adaptations was in place by the early Eocene, about 55 myr ago and if the earliest primate colonizers of Madagascar significantly predated this time, the strepsirhine bauplan would have been present substantially before. Early theories of euprimate origins e.g., Jones, 1916 Smith, 1924 held that it was adoption of...
Indicators of Dental Health 1
The postcanine dentition is central for food processing, therefore, the patterns of dental pathology in premolars and molars are most often related to diet and the breakdown of food. This contrasts with patterns seen in the anterior teeth across primates, in which dental damage often leading to disease results from social behaviors, for example interindividual aggression Lovell, 1990 Smith et al., 1977 or, in the case of ring-tailed lemurs at Beza Mahafaly, the possible impact of human activity...
Basic Morphology
Maxillary incisors range within and among Malagasy lemurs from entirely absent Lepilemur or reduced lemurids, Avahi to relatively prominent cheirogaleids, indriids see Table 1 Martin, 1972 Tattersall, 1982 . Maxillary canine size varies considerably among lemurs, with some taxa exhibiting very large i.e., high canines, relative to first molar size see Table 3 in Godfrey et al., this volume . Daubentonia has no permanent canines Swindler, 2002 Tattersall, 1982 . In Hapalemur, the maxillary...
Contributors
Frank P. Cuozzo, Department of Anthropology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota USA Deborah J. Curtis, School of Human amp Life Sciences, Roehampton University, London, United Kingdom K. H. Dausmann, Department of Ecology and Conservation, Biocenter Grindel, University Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany Joanna Fietz, Department of Experimental Ecology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany Benjamin Z. Freed, Department of Anthropology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Laurie R....
Indicators of Dental Health
Data on primate dental health primarily come from anthropoids e.g., Lovell, 1990 Schultz, 1935 Smith et al., 1977 , and only recently have data been published for lemurs. Lemur dental health e.g., wear, pathology, and antemortem tooth loss reflects many variables, including age, diet, habitat, life history, and even human impact e.g., Cuozzo and Sauther, 2004a, 2006, in press Sauther et al., 2006 . L. catta at Beza Mahafaly often display excessive damage to the toothcomb, with a number of...