Female lemurs with color vision provide advantages for their group

Date: December 5, 2016

Source: University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

Female lemurs with normal color vision, as well as their cohabitating colorblind group members, may have selective advantage over lemur groups whose members are all colorblind, according to anthropologists at The University of Texas at Austin.

Unlike other placental mammals, Old World monkeys, apes and humans are unique in displaying "normal" color vision -- or trichromacy. However, New World monkeys, or primates indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, are primarily red/green colorblind -- or dichromatic -- with trichromatic color vision occurring in some females but no males. Several scientific theories exist on how color vision diversity among these species has maintained over the years, but new research on Verreaux's sifaka, a species of lemur native to Madagascar, challenges existing hypotheses for the evolution of color vision in both Old and New World monkeys.

In the study, appearing in "Scientific Reports," UT Austin anthropologists documented trichromacy in a population of wild lemurs and its effects on fitness, such as reproductive success and feeding behavior. The study was conducted at UT Austin anthropology professor Rebecca Lewis's Ankoatsifaka Research Station at Kirindy Mitea National Park in western Madagascar, where she has accumulated a decade's worth of behavioral, health, demographic and habitat data on the sifaka.

 

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