guardian.co.uk,
Adam Vaughan, Thursday 13 September 2012
 |
| A new species of monkey (Cercopithecus lomamiensis), known locally as the lesula. Photograph: Hart JA, Detwiler KM, Gilbert CC/PA |
A new
species of monkey has been identified in Africa, only the second time such a
discovery has been made on the continent in 28 years.
The
identification of the monkey in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is
significant, as identification of mammals new to science is rare.
Lesula
(Cercopithecus lomamiensis) has a naked face and a mane of long blond hairs,
and is described by the researchers who identified it as shy and quiet. It
lives on the ground and in trees in a 6,500 square mile habitat of the lowland
rainforests in the centre of the DRC between the middle Lomami (the inspiration
for its name) and the upper Tshuapa Rivers. Its diet is mostly fruit and
vegetation.
John and
Terese Hart of Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History first saw
the species in 2007 at the home of a primary school director, who was keeping a
young female in the town of Opala. Later that year, the team found the species
– which is similar in appearance to the owl-faced monkey (Cercopithecushamlyni) but with different colouring – in the wild. Genetic tests later
verified it was a new species.
"This
was a totally unexpected find, and we knew we had something unusual and
possibly unknown when we first saw the animal. But it was not until we had the
genetic and morphological analyses of our collaborating team that we knew we
really had a new species," said the Harts, who are also conservation
biologists at the Lukuru Wildlife Research Project.
The monkey
lives mostly in small groups of one to five, and only one animal was seen on
its own during eight encounters. In what they describe as an
"exceptional" sighting, the researchers observed an apparent attack
on one of the monkeys by a crowned eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus), which
killed the female monkey.
There are
already fears for the newly discovered species' fate despite its home in a
relatively remote and underpopulated region, as it is hunted for bushmeat. The
director who owned the captive monkey said he had acquired it after a family
member had killed its mother in the forest. The researchers have provisionally
categorised it as already vulnerable under the authoritative IUCN red list of
threatened species.
"The
challenge now is to make the lesula an iconic species that carries the message
for conservation for all of Congo's endangered fauna," said John Hart.
"Species with small ranges like the lesula can move from vulnerable to
seriously endangered over the course of just a few years."
The last
monkey to be discovered in Africa was the kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji) in
Tanzania in 2003, nearly two decades after the last find, the sun-tailed monkey (Cercopithecus solatus) in Gabon, in 1984.
The
researchers' work on the Lesula was published this week in the journal PLOSONE
.
No comments:
Post a Comment