[Taxacom] Chimps and humans

[John Grehan]

Ha! That durian question would be interesting - I'll ask on a primate
list. Of course it raises the question as to whether humans originally
learned to eat the durian from orangutans or visa versa.

John Grehan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dr. David Campbell [mailto:amblema at bama.ua.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2009 11:14 AM
> To: John Grehan
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Chimps and humans
> 
> Quoting John Grehan <jgrehan at sciencebuff.org>:
> 
> > The problem here is that chimpanzees and orangutans do not overlap
> > in
> > their range and so different parasite associations with humans could
> > be
> > the result of their different geography. Same applies to overlap of
> > orangutans and gibbons. Using host-parasite associations has the
> > same
> > challenges as any other systematic comparison.
> 
> I just saw a paper (don't have reference handy) that claimed to be the
> first in-depth study of chimp malaria.  Based on their extensive
> sampling, they determined that human malaria was a recent derivative
> from within the chimp malaria, rather than a sister taxon.  Thus,
there
> is very likely some host switching.  Likewise, even under an orang
> (gorilla(chimp, human)) model, orang malaria would be closer to human
> than to gibbon malaria if they showed close host tracking, so probably
> malaria phylogenetics doesn't tell us much about hominid evolution.
> 
> Certain humans and orangutans both like durians, but I don't know if
> this has been tested on African apes.
> 
> --
> Dr. David Campbell
> 425 Scientific Collections Building
> Department of Biological Sciences
> Biodiversity and Systematics
> University of Alabama, Box 870345
> Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA