Lavasoa dwarf lemur
| Lavasoa dwarf lemur | |
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Not evaluated (IUCN 3.1)
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Suborder: | Strepsirrhini |
| Family: | Cheirogaleidae |
| Genus: | Cheirogaleus |
| Species: | C. lavasoensis |
| Binomial name | |
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Cheirogaleus lavasoensis Thiele et al., 2013 |
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The Lavasoa dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus lavasoensis) is a small, nocturnal strepsirrhine primate and a species of lemur that is endemic to three small, isolated patches of forest on the southern slopes of the Lavasoa Mountains in southern Madagascar. Fewer than 50 individuals are thought to exist. Its habitat lies in a transitional zone between three ecoregions: dry spiny bush, humid littoral forest, and humid forest. First collected in 2001 and thought to be a subpopulation of the furry-eared dwarf lemur (C. crossleyi), it was not formally described until 2013. It is one of six species of dwarf lemur, though the research that identified it also suggested the existence of many more new species.
The Lavasoa dwarf lemur belongs to the genus Cheirogaleus (dwarf lemurs) within the family Cheirogaleidae. Between October 2001 and December 2006, researchers collected ten mature adults (five male and five female) along with six immature individuals. The lemurs were released after they were measured and small tissue samples were taken from their ears. The holotype (AH-X-00-181) was an adult male, captured, recorded, and released at Petit Lavasoa on 10 October 2001. The analysis was published in 2013 by Dana Thiele and Andreas Hapke of Johannes Gutenberg University and Emilienne Razafimahatratra of the University of Antananarivo.
In the two decades prior to 2013, only two dwarf lemur species were known, but in 2000 primatologist Colin Groves raised the number to seven based on morphological data acquired from museum samples. However, in 2009 and 2011, two of these new species were rejected. The Lavasoa dwarf lemur, named for the Lavasoa Mountains in southern Madagascar, became the sixth known species in 2013 when it was differentiated from the furry-eared dwarf lemur (C. crossleyi) through analyses of and nuclear material performed by a team of German and Malagasy researchers. Furthermore, their research suggested the existence of three more new dwarf lemur species that they provisionally named Cheirogaleus sp. Ranomafana Andrambovato, Cheirogaleus sp. Bekaraoka Sambava, and Cheirogaleus sp. Ambanja, based on the regions the samples were collected. The Lavasoa dwarf lemur is most closely related to C. sp. Ranomafana/Andrambovato. The authors speculated that even greater species diversity may be found among dwarf lemurs by future studies due to their large geographic range and the great genetic distance exhibited within the genus.
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