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Molecules support morphology: species status of South Indian populations of the widely distributed Hanuman langur

Conservation Genetics volume 16, pages 43–58 (2015)Cite this article

Abstract

The taxonomy of the Hanuman langur (Semnopithecus spp.), a widely distributed Asian colobine monkey, has been in a flux for a long time due to much disagreement between various classification schemes. However, results from a recent field-based morphological study were consistent with Hill’s (Ceylon J Sci 21:277–305, 1939) species level classification scheme. Here we tested the validity of S. hypoleucos and S. priam, the two South Indian species recognized by Hill. To this end, one mitochondrial and four nuclear markers were sequenced from over 72 non-invasive samples of Hanuman langurs and S. johnii collected from across India. The molecular data were subjected to various tree building methods. The nuclear data was also used in a Bayesian structure analysis and to determine the genealogical sorting index of each hypothesized species. Results from nuclear data suggest that the South Indian population of Hanuman langur consists of two units that correspond to the species recognized by Hill. However in the mitochondrial tree S. johnii and S. priam were polyphyletic probably due to retention of ancestral polymorphism and/or low levels of hybridization. Implications of these results on conservation of Hanuman langurs are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India (BT/PR-7127/BCE/08/445/2006) and the ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Government of India. We thank the forest departments of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh for Forest permits to collect samples. We are grateful to Sunitha Ram, Dr. Uma Ramkrishnan, Kartik Bala, Manjunath Reddy, Ishan Agarwal, Aniruddha Datta-Roy, Achyuthan and R. S. Harve for providing us with the samples. We are also thankful to Avinash Kedumulor for drawing the maps.

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  1. Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    N. C. Ashalakshmi, K. S. Chetan Nag & K. Praveen Karanth

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  1. N. C. Ashalakshmi
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  2. K. S. Chetan Nag
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  3. K. Praveen Karanth
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Correspondence to K. Praveen Karanth.

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Ashalakshmi, N.C., Nag, K.S.C. & Karanth, K.P. Molecules support morphology: species status of South Indian populations of the widely distributed Hanuman langur. Conserv Genet 16, 43–58 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-014-0638-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10592-014-0638-4

Keywords

  • Systematics
  • Semnopithecus
  • Multi-locus
  • Genetic distance
  • Bayesian structure
  • Genealogical sorting index