Ring-Tailed Lemurs
Adaptive Radiation
By: Elisa Esquivel
About me
My name is King Julien and I need to tell you my story. I am a lemur, a ring-tailed lemur to be exact. I have bright yellow eyes, a grey fur body. I love my tail. It has 26 black and white rings and that's how my family became known as the ring-tailed lemurs. Madagascar is the only place where you can find us. I live in the southeastern part of the Madagascar forest, and that consist of many different forests suck as deciduous forests, dry scrub forests, montane humid forests and gallery forests. My family and I love to spend our time on the forest floor where we can eat many insects like spiders, caterpillars, and grasshoppers as we want. We also hang out in the mid-canopy of the forest where we can eat things like leaves, flowers, herbs, bark, and sap.
I have many cousins all over the island. We believe that we descended from one species that decided to come to Madagascar. When that species arrived, it was able to evolve and change into the lemurs that we are now. We have all been able to adapt to our environments and be able to find different resources. We also have our ways to defend from predators and stay safe.
My Ancestry
My ancestry as a ring-tailed lemur gets a little weird. The lemurs from Madagascar all evolved from the Strepsirrhini. The Strepsirrhini was a type of primate that was on Africa before a piece branched off 63 million years ago. While it’s unclear how my ancestors got to the island there have been some theories. One theory is that they got on logs of some sort that were blown out to sea and landed on Madagascar. Others believe that my ancestors were on the island when it broke off from Africa. The Strepsirrhini was isolated on the island that they were able to evolve into the different lemurs that we have now. My family is a perfect example of a thing called
"Adaptive Radiation" because we can cope with new environment changes.
Going Extinct
My family is going extinct very quickly. There are only about 2,400 ring-tailed lemurs left in Madagascar! There has been a ninety-five percent decline since 2000. My family and I are one of the most threatened mammals in the world. Ever since humans have been cutting down trees in the Madagascar Rainforest, my family is getting killed or getting injured. There are also people trading my family as exotic pets, which is causing us to be separated. Also, the people that we coexist with are extremely poor and can't afford food, they eat us. There are 32 sites where my kind lives. If we protect these places, my kind won't be threatened as much as we are now.
Conclusion
References
- “Interplay of Phenology and Reproduction in Ring-Tailed Lemurs: Implications for Ring-Tailed Lemur Conservation.” Karger Publishers, L. Sauther M. , 1998, www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/52719.
- Bodin, Örjan, et al. “The Value Of Small Size: Loss Of Forest Patches And Ecological Thresholds In Southern Madagascar.” The Ecological Society of America, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 1 Apr. 2006, esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1890/1051-0761(2006)016[0440:TVOSSL]2.0.CO;2.
- D., P. K., et al. “Diets of Two Lemur Species in Different Microhabitats in Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar.” International Journal of Primatology, Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers, 1 Jan. 1996, link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1019645931827.
- Evans, C. S., and R. W. Goy. “Social Behaviour and Reproductive Cycles in Captive Ring‐Tailed Lemurs (Lemur Catta)*.” ZSL Publications, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 20 Aug. 2009, zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1968.tb05928.x.
- Harper, Grady J., et al. “Fifty Years of Deforestation and Forest Fragmentation in Madagascar: Environmental Conservation.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, 7 Jan. 2008, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/environmental-conservation/article/fifty-years-of-deforestation-and-forest-fragmentation-in-madagascar/F911B1B66BF6F2FCDA15422940F97306.