[Taxacom] Fwd: competition on Peleng (actually versus two specie of cuscus)
John Grehan
calabar.john at gmail.com
Wed Jun 20 08:28:58 CDT 2018
Hi Ken,
The traditional view of 'Wallacea' as an evolutionary 'filter' is based on
center of origin and dispersal theory (Darwinian biogeography). The
underlying assumption this that overlapping distributions are the product
of chance dispersal from different centers of origin. But when one does
correlation spatial analysis then one finds that there is no empirical
support for that Victorian notion. Rather, taxa show tectonic correlations
which points to a geological history in the formation of distributions. The
region is a tectonic amalgam and so to it is a biogeographic amalgam. But
then all regions of the world are biogeographic and tectonic amalgams at
some level. Biogeographically 'Wallacea' does not exist in the real world
any more than 'Australia', 'New Zealand', 'Asia' or 'USA'. So no wonder
traditional biogeographers find Wallacea so 'frustrating'.
Panbiogeographers experience no such frustrations at all since there is no
requirement to recognize,or not, the existence of a Wallacea. As Heads
noted, what matters in the science of biogeography is analysis.
John Grehan
On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 9:14 AM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> Although my hypothesis of Wallacea being a battleground between
> primates and cuscuses ("marsupial monkeys" as they are sometimes called)
> may seem ad hoc, but I think it is worth pursuing. I finding it
> particularly interesting that the bear cuscus is unusual in being diurnal,
> so we have both diurnal and nocturnal cuscuses and primates in this
> battleground.
>
> Sulawesi being a much larger island seems able to accomodate a mix
> of species that would not be possible on the much smaller islands to the
> east. That tarsiers were able to spread to some of those much smaller
> islands could be due to their small size and secretive nature. Or perhaps
> they just got there before cuscuses.
>
> All of these small islands in Wallacea seem to be an evolutionary
> filter in both directions, and as a mammalogist, I am finding the mix of
> primates and marsupials particularly interesting. And cuscuses ("marsupial
> monkeys") are not as well studied, and it is thought that there are still
> undiscovered species in this region.
>
> But there are admittedly other factors that make this battleground
> region more difficult to understand. The changing ocean currents and
> changes in sea level that Scott mentioned could be a major factor for some
> organisms and not for others. It is no wonder why biogeographers find
> Wallacea so interesting (and frustrating).
>
> -----------Ken
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of Michael
> Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2018 6:33 AM
> To: Taxacom
> Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: competition on Peleng (actually versus two species
> of cuscus)
>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 11:06 AM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Ken,
> >
> > Monkeys range east only to Sulawesi, while the only primates east of
> there
> > are tarsiers on the interesting chain of islands: Peleng, Siau and
> > Sangihe. The cuscuses Strigocuscus and Ailurops are both on Sulawesi
> > and Peleng, Strigo. is also on Siau and Sangihe. Why would the cuscuses
> > prevent monkeys establishing on Peleng, Siau and Sangihe by competition
> > when they all live together on Sulawesi?
> >
> > A closely related question is why and how tarsiers are on Peleng, Siau
> and
> > Sangihe. The expert on this group, Myron Shekelle, admitted that 'How
> > tarsiers ever came to these islands is a mystery'. Also, why are
> > tarsiers on *these *islands, but not further east?
> >
> > The islands in this 'tarsier belt' - Peleng, Siau and Sangihe - are
> > geographically insignificant, but form one of the most interesting areas
> in
> > the world for biogeographers and geologists (distributions and geology in
> > the region are illustrated in Figs. 5-15 and 5-16 of my Tropics book).
> E.g.
> > apart from the tarsiers it has one of the highest densities of
> > endemic birds in the world. Why? Many of the birds are related to groups
> > further east (including eastern New Guinea groups, 1000s of km away), not
> > to groups on the much closer Sulawesi. The geology is also very unusual
> - the
> > Sangihe and Halmahera arcs are undergoing the only active arc collision
> on
> > Earth. Most biogeographers understand that at a subduction zone, such as
> > the Sangihe SZ, the plates move towards each other. What many
> > biogeographers do not understand is that active subduction zones
> (producing
> > islands) themselves often move long distances, at rates of ~10cm/yr.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 2:30 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> I am still catching up on the changing taxonomy of the cuscuses.
> >> Back when I was working on our 1st Edition of the reference book "Mammal
> >> Species of the World" (1st Edition, by Honacki, Kinman, and Koeppl,
> 1982),
> >> Strigocuscus was included within genus Phalanger, but genetic data since
> >> then has apparently shown them to be in separate subfamilies.
> >>
> >> In any case, although the species of Strigocuscus on Sulawesi and
> >> Peleng Island is a "pygmy" species, the other species on Peleng is a
> more
> >> normal size. I had overlooked is that the bear cuscus is also on Peleng
> >> Island. So any monkey trying to become established on Peleng Island
> would
> >> have faced two species of well-established species of cuscuses.
> >>
> >> So it is even less surprising that monkeys did not expand east of
> >> Sulawesi. The battle ground between monkeys and marsupial cuscuses
> seems
> >> most intense between Sulawesi and nearby Peleng Island. This
> battleground
> >> in Wallacea seems to have favored cuscus over monkeys, even though they
> >> managed to coexist on the westernmost Wallacean island of Sulawesi.
> Just a
> >> matter of Sulawesi being a larger island with more competition allowing
> a
> >> stalemate of sorts. Both monkeys and cuscuses survived there, but not
> >> further east, and cuscuses did not survive further west. Something that
> >> neither Wallace's Line nor Weber's Line seems to have anticipated.
> >>
> >> -----Ken Kinman
> >>
> >> P.S. When cuscuses were first discovered they were thought to be a
> >> species monkey. So similar to monkeys in their form, habitat, and food
> >> sources, but only the discovery that cuscuses were pouched marsupials
> did
> >> their true relationship become known. I'm not sure if you could say
> that
> >> they are more like monkeys or lemurs. In any case, monkeys would have
> met
> >> their match in both Madagascar (versus lemurs) and east of Sulawesi
> (versus
> >> the two species of cuscuses).
> >>
> >>
> >> ------------------------------
> >> *From:* Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> on behalf of
> >> Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com>
> >> *Sent:* Monday, June 18, 2018 8:54 AM
> >> *To:* Michael Heads; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> >> *Subject:* Re: [Taxacom] competition on Peleng (was: Jurassic
> >> primates???)
> >>
> >> Hi Michael,
> >>
> >> Well, I was talking about monkeys in general, but even with
> >> macaques, I would think a male cuscus could take on a female macaque.
> When
> >> I talk about transoceanic dispersal of primates, I am usually thinking
> >> about of a group of pregnant females. No adult males required, as long
> as
> >> one or more of the females are pregnant with male offspring.
> >>
> >> Such a group of pregnant female monkeys landing on a small island
> >> like Peleng that has a well-established cuscus population could have a
> very
> >> rough time trying to get established. If not killed by male cuscuses,
> the
> >> cuscuses could drive the pregnant monkeys away from the best food
> sources
> >> (and they just die from malnutrition). Likewise, cuscuses haven't
> spread
> >> further east because monkeys were already well established there.
> >>
> >> Monkeys introduced by humans in New Guinea is a different story.
> >> They get established around human habitations and then spread out from
> >> there. And there is a lot more territory than on a small island like
> >> Peleng.
> >>
> >> --------------Ken
> >>
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
> >> Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 2:09 AM
> >> To: Kenneth Kinman
> >> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] competition on Peleng (was: Jurassic primates???)
> >>
> >> Hi Ken,
> >>
> >> You say: 'Cuscuses are a very monkey-like marsupial', and suggest that
> >> they prevented monkeys from establishing east of Sulawesi.
> >>
> >> I know cuscuses and monkeys quite well (I lived for a long time in
> Africa
> >> and in New Guinea) and I wouldn'y describe them as very similar at all
> >> really - for a start, the monkeys concerned (macaques) are at least
> twice
> >> the size of a cuscus, much smarter and much more aggressive. But in any
> >> case, New Guinea is very rich in cuscuses and, as I mentioned,
> introduced
> >> monkeys have established there with no problems.
> >>
> >> I'm sure you can think up an ad hoc reason for that particular
> >> phenomenon, but I prefer to look at the group, and all its biogeographic
> >> boundaries, overall. As Edgar Allan Poe said, 'the ingenious are always
> >> fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic'.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 2:49 PM, Kenneth Kinman <kinman at hotmail.com
> >> <mailto:kinman at hotmail.com>> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Michael,
> >>
> >> Sulawesi and Peleng (being in the western part of "Wallacea") are
> >> an interesting battleground between the Asian and Australian faunas. In
> >> answer to your question, I suspect that monkeys could have encountered
> >> competitive exclusion on Peleng by a combination of not only the
> tarsiers
> >> there, but even more so by the marsupial species Strigocuscus
> pelengensis.
> >> This marsupial is also in the Sula Islands, which might also explain why
> >> monkeys didn't get into the Molucca Islands either (although a greater
> >> distance gap might also explain that).
> >>
> >> The other species of Strigocuscus does live on Sulawesi, but being
> >> called a dwarf cuscus, I assume it is smaller (and therefore less
> >> competitive and aggressive) than the species on Peleng. So I would say
> >> that studying the possible battle between the cuscus marsupials and
> monkeys
> >> in western Wallacea (especially on Peleng) could be far more fruitful
> than
> >> just tarsiers vs. monkeys. It could be a combination of both battles in
> >> this transition zone.
> >>
> >> The males of cuscuses in particular can be quite aggressive. And
> >> the cuscus on Peleng (presumably being larger than those on Sulawesi and
> >> being on a much smaller island) might be the main reason any attempted
> >> monkey dispersals would fail. Probably more so than tarsiers. Cuscuses
> >> are a very monkey-like marsupial.
> >>
> >> -----------------Ken Kinman
> >>
> >>
> >> ________________________________
> >> From: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com<mailto:m.j.heads at gmail.com>>
> >> Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2018 6:31 PM
> >> To: Kenneth Kinman
> >> Cc: Taxacom
> >> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Jurassic primates???
> >>
> >> Hi Ken,
> >>
> >> Mesozoic mammal fossils are very different from modern groups, and their
> >> affinities are often very controversial or simply admitted as unknown.
> If
> >> modern morphological work identified the phylogenetic position of groups
> >> such as cetaceans incorrectly - when the vast wealth of morphological
> >> information was available from complete specimens - isn't it very likely
> >> that they have misidentified many, fragmentary Mesozoic fossil groups in
> >> which the key features are not preserved?
> >>
> >> Did you see the lizard paper I mentioned (pushing back dates by 75
> m.y.)?
> >> Do you agree with my earlier statement that Goswami & Upchurch's
> reasoning
> >> is illogical (they wrote that fossils provide minimum ages, but then
> >> treated the fossil age of eutherians as a maximum age for primates)?
> Also,
> >> you haven't said which examples of vicariance you accept.
> >>
> >> Some other 'extraordinary' evidence for primates:
> >> Monkeys are diverse on Philippines/Sulawesi, but they reach their limit
> >> there and are entirely absent from islands to the east, such as Peleng,
> 20
> >> km off eastern Sulawesi, the Moluccas etc. If monkeys dispersed across
> the
> >> Atlantic long after it opened, why would a 20 km strait block their
> >> dispersal?
> >>
> >> Peleng is a small island, so you might think that large monkeys could
> not
> >> exist there. But macaques are famously 'weedy' and Peleng is the same
> size
> >> as Zanzibar (30 km off the African mainland), which has endemic monkeys.
> >>
> >> You might hypothesize that the tarsiers on Peleng prevented the monkeys
> >> from establishing there by competition, but monkeys and tarsiers overlap
> >> through most of the tarsiers' range.
> >>
> >> You might suggest that islands east of Philippines/Sulawesi are
> >> ecologically unsuitable for some other reason, but monkeys introduced to
> >> Palau and to western New Guinea have thrived and are now pests.
> >>
> >> Of course, the 'extraordinary' break between Sulawesi and Peleng could
> >> just be due to the vagaries of chance dispersal, but wouldn't it be
> useful
> >> to investigate other possibilities?
> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
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>
>
> --
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>
> My books:
>
> *Biogeography and evolution in New Zealand. *Taylor and Francis/CRC, Boca
> Raton FL. 2017.
> https://www.routledge.com/Biogeography-and-Evolution-in-
> New-Zealand/Heads/p/book/9781498751872
>
>
> *Biogeography of Australasia: A molecular analysis*. Cambridge University
> Press, Cambridge. 2014. www.cambridge.org/9781107041028<http://www.
> cambridge.org/9781107041028>
>
>
> *Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics. *University of California Press,
> Berkeley. 2012. www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271968<http://www.
> ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520271968>
>
>
> *Panbiogeography: Tracking the history of life*. Oxford University Press,
> New York. 1999. (With R. Craw and J. Grehan).
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