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Defining Genera of New World Monkeys: The Need for a Critical View in a Necessarily Arbitrary Task

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An Erratum to this article was published on 14 December 2015

Abstract

The genus is one of the most important taxonomic categories because it appears in the two-part species name, is easier to identify than the species, and is very commonly the least inclusive category employed in paleontological, ecomorphological, phylogenetic, evolutionary, and biogeographic comparisons. However, the theoretical and practical definitions of genera have received little attention in the New World monkey literature. Six genus-level changes in platyrrhine taxonomy have been suggested since 1998. The genera Leontocebus, Mico, Oreonax, and Sapajus, have been revalidated and Callibella and “Torquatus” proposed as new. Divergence time is becoming the favored criterion when defining genera, but most molecular phylogenetic studies date the divergence between alleles, not between species, which is the actual date of interest when studying systematics. I here review the recent genus-level changes in platyrrhine taxonomy and propose that we adopt a “focused monophyly” approach for defining genera that overlays a wide variety of morphological, behavioral, and ecological characteristics on the molecular phylogeny to produce a classification. This proposal aims to facilitate communication among researchers and to offer a robust, more predictive, taxonomy that will better withstand future investigations.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the organizers of the symposium on mammal systematics, Marcelo Weksler and Yuri Leite, for inviting me to participate, Mario de Vivo for supervising my study, and Joanna Setchell and three anonymous referees, whose insights and suggestions were most constructive. Thank you also to Mort Isler, for his advice on the focused monophyly expression and Professor Colin Groves for his comments on the validity of Torquatus. Although the opinions expressed here are my own, this text has improved greatly from the critical review of the following individuals: Anderson Feijó, Fabio Nascimento, Gabriela Rezende, Jose Serrano Villavicencio, Rafael Marcondes, and Valeria da Cunha Tavares. This study was funded by Brazilian Higher Education Authority (CAPES).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pós-graduação em Zoologia, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 31270-901, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Guilherme Siniciato Terra Garbino

  2. IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas, 12960-000, Nazaré Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil

    Guilherme Siniciato Terra Garbino

  3. Pós-graduação, Museu de Zoologia, Universidade de São Paulo, 04263-000, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

    Guilherme Siniciato Terra Garbino

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  1. Guilherme Siniciato Terra Garbino
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Correspondence to Guilherme Siniciato Terra Garbino.

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Garbino, G.S.T. Defining Genera of New World Monkeys: The Need for a Critical View in a Necessarily Arbitrary Task. Int J Primatol 36, 1049–1064 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-015-9882-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-015-9882-9

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