“We know where the individuals we sampled live in the wild. The fact that the genomic information came from wild-born individuals (as opposed to those in captivity) offers researchers an important advantage, Fernandez-Duque explained. The new dataset could help researchers better understand, among other things, the genetics behind the activity patterns and circadian biology of owl monkeys and other primates. Some species are entirely nocturnal while others are both nocturnal and diurnal. The owl monkeys, which entirely comprise the family Aotidae, is the only primate species in the Americas with nocturnal habits. “The dataset’s high number of wild-born individuals is novel and extremely valuable,” said Fernandez-Duque, a professor of anthropology in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Yale School of the Environment. Importantly, more than 72% of individuals represented in the dataset - including all the owl monkeys that Fernandez-Duque sampled - were born in the wild, he said. More than half of the species in the dataset are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It provided the basis for three separate studies published June 2 in the journal Science, two of which Fernandez-Duque coauthored.Īll told, the researchers compiled data from 809 individuals representing 233 of the 521 recognized primate species, covering all 16 primate families and 86% of genera - the classification that falls between family and species. The dataset, assembled by a consortium that includes dozens of researchers from institutions worldwide, includes samples from 30 owl monkeys inhabiting a field site in northeastern Argentina established by Fernandez-Duque in 1996 on 2,500 acres of forest in the country’s Chaco region of Formosa Province. A new dataset of genetic information collected from 233 primate species, the largest and most complete of its kind, promises to yield insights into primates’ evolutionary biology and how genetics influences their behavior, says Yale biological anthropologist Eduardo Fernandez-Duque.
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