Why are apes paraphyletic

In the same way, the way we understand what an ape is has changed. A revised evolutionary picture is influencing the way we apply the word. In fact, I think such statements — which seem to fly in the face of what we previously believed to be true — help people ask questions about how organisms are related to each other.

And the words we choose depend upon how specific we wish to be. You are a fish, too. The origin of the first vertebrates capable of crawling on land was one of the most important events in our evolutionary history. These creatures are known as tetrapods by virtue of having four tetra limbs, and a growing number of discoveries has begun to outline how fleshy-finned fish were adapted into the first amphibious vertebrates.

But Tiktaalik is not alone. Other vertebrates, such as the vaguely salamander-like Ventastega and the flattened Panderichthys , also demonstrate that our bodies, as Neil Shubin so wonderfully articulated in Your Inner Fish , are modified from archaic fishy forms.

And University of California, Berkeley paleontologist Brian Swartz has just described another creature relevant to this famous evolutionary event. Tinirau was a fully aquatic fish, and a fish quite similar to the iconic, fleshy-finned form Eusthenopteron a prehistoric fish once believed to have been the starting point for tetrapod evolution.

As Swartz points out, though, the relationships of these creatures to the next grade in the evolutionary transition — flattened fish with stouter, more limb-like fins such as Tiktaalik — is not entirely clear. Tinirau adds a little more resolution to the picture. The six fossils of this fish, originally collected in the s from roughly million year old deposits Nevada, look like bony smears across rock slabs. But, in detail, much of the fish remain intact. The skull, a significant part of the backbone, and several sets of bones which supported the fins of Tinirau are visible in one of the better specimens, designated UCMP Those fin bones are especially important.

Rather than being arrays of splint-like bones — as you can see in a perch, bass, or many other fish — the fin bones correspond to the bones in our own arms. The fins attached to the body by way of a single bone — the equivalent of the humeri in our arms and femora in our legs — and archaic precursors of our lower arm and leg bones can be seen in the collection of fin bones below.

In a phylogenetic study of five bovine species, Ho et al. For the deep internal portion of the tree connecting the species, they used an uninformative tree prior. Because the chimpanzee-plus alignment contains a combination of interspecific sequences and intraspecific common chimpanzee sequences, we adapted this approach and implemented Yule speciation prior across the tree but with separate coalescent priors applied to each of the four P.

Initially, we performed two separate analyses: one with all four subspecies clades assigned a constant demographic growth rate prior and one with an exponential growth rate prior applied to all. Therefore, we performed a third analysis with a combination of constant P. We report the results of the third analysis, though we note that the results from all three of the above analyses were statistically indistinguishable.

These runs were calibrated with the same three internal node priors but were executed in a more conventional manner under a Yule speciation tree prior only. The bootstrapped-chimpanzee alignments included no intrapopulational data; each alignment contained only one sequence per species or subspecies, making a Yule speciation model an appropriate choice. We also examined chimpanzee evolution without imposing a molecular clock by using MrBayes v3. For all BEAST and MrBayes analyses, convergence and proper mixing, with estimated sample sizes exceeding , were confirmed by examination with Tracer v1.

In this study, we performed the first mtDNA-based analysis of the timing and topology of diversification within the P. By simultaneously incorporating speciation and population-level demographic parameters into our analyses, we also obtained tMRCA estimates of major primate lineages back to the most recent common ancestor preceding the split of New World monkeys from Old World monkeys and the Great Apes.

We inferred the phylogenies for our chimpanzee-plus mtDNA alignment fig. The bootstrapped-chimpanzee approach utilized a standard Yule speciation prior because each run of the analysis consisted of only one sequence per species or subspecies. The chimpanzee-plus analysis was more complex because it combined a Yule speciation prior across the tree with separate population-level coalescent priors on each chimpanzee subspecies clade. The resulting between-species tMRCA estimates from these two approaches are statistically indistinguishable Table 2 , thus supporting the utility of the mixed-model approach, first described by Ho et al.

Though some discrepancies exist in side-by-side comparisons with individual studies, our interspecific tMRCA estimates fall within the ranges of existing nuclear- and mtDNA-based estimates of primate divergence dates e. The topology resulting from our PhyML analysis of the chimpanzee-plus alignment revealed high node support and a topology matching that of our BMCMC results with or without a molecular clock imposed as expected see Wertheim et al.

The MCC tree is presented, with the Pan troglodytes clade shown boxed and enlarged. The subspecies of each sample was determined by mtDNA haplotype and is indicated by color. Open circles indicate fossil-calibrated nodes. The P. Specific details of the node date estimations are included in Table 2. Our study implements several key features that represent important advancements to the field, including 1 the estimation of within-chimpanzee subspecies tMRCAs based on mtDNA data, 2 the incorporation of a relaxed molecular clock and the lognormal distribution of fossil calibration dates, and 3 the fusion, into one analysis, of a species-level Yule prior across the entire primate tree with separate coalescent priors for the diversification of each chimpanzee subspecies.

A study of this scope in chimpanzees was impossible before the addition of our 24 complete mitochondrial genomes. Until now, complete mtDNA genome sequences were available for only one of the four chimpanzee subspecies P.

One conclusion to be drawn from this newly expanded collection of sequence data is the extent to which the mitochondrial genome of common chimpanzees evolves at a clock-like tempo fig. Twenty-six P. The majority-rule consensus tree is presented. Branch tips are colored by species or subspecies. Relationship patterns are the same as in figure 3 , but sequence names are removed for clarity.

Our estimate of 2. Two of the conflicting autosomal studies above Yu et al. Their model also leads to a much more recent within- P. Nearly all their date ranges are considerably older than ours. It is important to note that discrepancies in dates, such as those mentioned above, could be due to the fact that the different methods provide temporal estimates of different events.

This distribution was used to calibrate the root of the chimpanzee-only analysis. As demonstrated previously e. The oldest of these two major clades has a tMRCA of 0.

The tMRCA of the younger of the two major clades is estimated at 0. Analyses by Gagneux et al. Our study finds P. This same topological pattern was reported earlier on the basis of shorter sequences Liu et al. The Sanaga River serves as a barrier between the two major chimpanzee lineages, with the P.

This barrier is not complete, however, as a P. From the Sanaga River, the primary range of P. The primary range of its closest relative, P. From a phylogeographic perspective, it is unclear what was responsible historically for maintaining the isolation between populations of P.

I got confused on page , right hand column where it says, "To the cladist, however, the statement that humans evolved from apes says essentially that humans evolved from something that they are not I think I can help you on that one.

To a cladist, humans ARE apes, just like they are primates, and mammals, and amniotes, and tetrapods, and "bony fishes" Osteichthyes , and vertebrates, and chordates, and metazoans, and eukaryotes, and so on back to members in the clade of all life on Earth. The point is one of the relationship between a whole and its parts. One cannot say that humans evolved FROM apes because they are part of the ape clade. It is like characterizing two groups, humans and mammals.

Therefore, apes are not monkeys. Perhaps someday, but today is not the day. Wow — thanks for your comments on use of ape and monkey in other languages. Your points actually do a good job of reinforcing my point that language is mutable and definitions are required. I hope however that you will continue to refer to Barbary Macaques as Barbary Apes, as determined using the Linnean classification. Changing the name of one small sub-species to fit phylogeny. Changing the broad all-encompassing common name of a suborder, etc… Not really feeling it.

Barbary Ape should be renamed done. Definition of ape should not be changed. Flying Lemur should be renamed. Definition of lemur should not be changed. Except of course nothing is changed by making the term monkey equivalent to Simiformes. The Hominoidea remain apes and the two clades of monkeys remain monkeys.

The only difference is that the ape clade nestles in the monkey clade. This is the most logical way of incorporating the term monkey into a modern understanding of primate phylogeny. They wanted to make the same distinction they found in English but not in Italian, German, French… , so they broke the synonymy.

This was, in my opinion, forced, artificial, and pedantic. Spanish dictionaries are not very good at scientific terms, or when science jargon meanings are in conflict with common meanings of the same word. In some cases they are a disaster. I guess this was to match the Linnean taxonomy, which since been superseded anyway!

Anyone know the origin of Ekembo — the new name for Proconsul heseloni? Fish is an ill-defined term, but since humans are classified as osteichthyes you can call yourself a fish without being wrong. Apes did not evolve from monkeys. We are all primates though. You have no understanding of evolution whatsoever. This is a very odd discussion.

The correct term, if you wish to have one, would be that all monkeys, apes, and humans are members of the suborder Strepsirrhini, which in turn is divided in Platyrrhini NWMs and Catarrhini OWMs. In no professional discipline dealing with primates are apes considered a type of monkey. That would be like saying that an apple is a type of banana. The fact is, we are no longer any of those things, but we are still vertebrates. In a logically consistent taxonomy we can be attributed as members of any clade that we fall into, which includes the Simiiformes which can be logically linked to the common name monkey.

Nor were any of our ancestors reptiles. Reptiles, as a clade, is roughly equivalent to diapsids. We, as mammals, are synapsids. Pingback: Nick Palmer, Writer. While I agree with you on the point about sharing a common ancestor, the node defines the clade and the simiformes node incorporates the platyrrhines, the catarrhines and the Hominidae plus Hylobatidae clade. Here is how it works. Apes and old world monkeys share a common ancestor 25 million years ago.

Old world monkeys and new world monkeys share a common ancestor 40 million years ago. Since old world monkeys and new world monkeys share a common ancestor, that ancestor would, by definition, be a monkey. Since the common ancestor between apes and old world monkey is 25 million years ago, that means that the common ancestor of apes and old world monkeys was a monkey. You are nothing more than a modified variation of whatever it is your ancestor was. I just want to add my five cents to this very old but nevertheless interesting topic.

As it was mentioned before this is a problem exclusive to English language. As a native Russian speaker I can provide you with ours point of view.

In Russian we do not differentiate apes from monkeys that much. While the aforementioned examples are clearly wrong, and apes I suppose are a subset of monkeys, those who understand the difference tend to use the proper term to be clear in exactly what they are referring to.

What a load of sophmore crap. There are humans and apes. Love all the the proper English though. Pingback: When is a giant octopus not a giant octopus? Fistful Of Cinctans. If we are apes because we came from apes, and we are monkeys because we came from monkeys, then how are we not fish, amphibians, or reptiles if our ancestors were some of these things?

I mean, all life started out in the water and anything with a backbone has ancestry to fish, am I correct? I can understand to a certain extend how we may belong in clades from our ancestors since we inherit those traits. But can you be removed from a clade over time? Like the idea that we are apes just as birds are dinosaurs and snakes are lizards, but I am confused on how far back this goes in following our ancestry.

Effectively this goes all the way back to our first ancestor. It is standard practice to refer to the name of the clade that is specific to the range of taxa you want to refer to. Organisms are put into clades based on their biology and characteristics, correct? Is there any site that is reliable and shows all the clades including this one?

Mainly for future reference. Nope, clades are defined by shared common ancestry nodes on the stem of a cladogram , not by the character states of the crown taxa. But then clades are meaningless.

Actually, clades are far more meaningful than artificial groupings based on similarity, because the tell us the evolutionary relationships between taxa. These provide far more valuable information than arbitrary names applied for convenience, since they reflect something real. In answer to your question, the point to calling them mammals is to recognise that they have their evolutionary roots within the mammals, allowing a better understanding of what changes would have needed to occur for them to look so different to their other mammal relatives.

Pingback: Is the vampire squid an octopus or a squid? I think, to be as unbiased and fair as possible and also not as smart as the rest of the people commenting here, that the problem comes in with calling apes monkeys less with you educated knowledgeable folks,and more with Joe public. As someone who has worked with great apes and new world monkeys both and really enjoys the new world monkeys quite a bit I feel like my personal issue with seeing bonobos or chimps in TV shows referred to as monkeys is more about connotation than denotation.

I love me my capuchins. I am into some new world primates, man. I am a fan of macaques. But after working with a variety, I can honestly say that a great ape feels on the mental and emotional level of a human being. And to call them a monkey puts people who are not in a primate or animal, really related field in the mindset of an animal who they would not respect at their own level, and even if a chimpanzee is not a person, they have proven that they should be treated, emotionally and intellectually, on the same level.

But maybe you should think a bit more about the immediate good of such a declaration would do for nonhumans than how right smartass humans would be, because one of us is pretty much a plague at this point and the other is on the verge of disappearing and could really do with some assistance, grammar and scientific clarification be damned.