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Re: New Papers of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

There are NO primate species (or genera for that matter) that occur in both Africa and Madagascar. As a matter of fact I don't think Africa and Madagascar have *any* mammal species in common (except the probably introduced bush-pig). It is true that the Madagascar mammals are most closely related to african ones, since they are the result of a very few (about 6 or 7) sweepstake dispersals from Africa to Madagascar.
There is definitely a West Gondwanan element in the Madagascar fauna (e g iguanas and boine snakes) but admittedly it is not very large.

However it would make much more sense to lump the Indomalayan and Afrotropic biogeographic regions than Madagascar and the Afrotropic, both on the grounds of general similarity and the proportion of shared taxa. Having visited all major biogeographic regions on Earth my personal opinion is that Madagascar is the one that is most distinct.

Tommy Tyrberg



At 21:54 2007-10-11, Jaime A. Headden wrote: 
David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<Biogeographically it does not make sense to lump Madagascar into Africa.>

Current biological endemism is also linked to Africa, including many of the
primate species that exist there and on Africa, and no where else. It is (at
least currently) part of the African entourage, rather than historically part
of a series of smaller landmasses that connected with other, disparate larger
landmasses. This is also why currently India is linked to mainland Asian
faunas, rather than some continuing subcontinental endemism that persists only
there. Collecting from India's Cretaceous formations has yet to yield such
fossils, however, as small deinonychosaurs.

  Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden
http://bitestuff.blogspot.com/

"Innocent, unbiased observation is a myth." --- P.B. Medawar (1969)



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