Safe sleeping sites may be a limited resource crucial for survival. In order to investigate their potential significance for social organization in nocturnal primates, we analyzed the spatial distribution of daily sleeping sites, their characteristics, their usage, and sleeping group compositions in the nocturnal Milne Edwards' sportive lemur during a 6-month field study in the dry deciduous forest of northwestern Madagascar. Sexes did not differ either in body size or in body mass. Sleeping sites were used almost exclusively by adult male-female pairs. Individuals showed a high sleeping-site fidelity limited to 2-3 different sleeping sites in close vicinity during the whole study period. Most females showed a higher fidelity to one distinct sleeping site than their male partners. Sleeping groups consisted of one adult male and one adult female and remained stable in composition over the whole study period. Exclusive pair-specific usage of sleeping sites suggests sleeping site related territoriality of male-female pairs, perhaps influenced by inter- and intrasexual resource competition. Results give first insights into the distribution patterns and social organization of this species. They imply dispersed monogamy for the Milne Edwards' sportive lemur, with sleeping sites as a potentially restricted and defendable resource.

The living Malagasy lemurs constitute a spectacular radiation of >50 species that are believed to have evolved from a common ancestor that colonized Madagascar in the early Tertiary period. Yet, at least 15 additional Malagasy primate species, some of which were relative giants, succumbed to extinction within the past 2,000 years. Their existence in Madagascar is recorded predominantly in its Holocene subfossil record. To rigorously test the hypothesis that all endemic Malagasy primates constitute a monophyletic group and to determine the evolutionary relationships among living and extinct taxa, we have conducted an ancient DNA analysis of subfossil species. A total of nine subfossil individuals from the extinct genera Palaeopropithecus and Megaladapis yielded amplifiable DNA. Phylogenetic analysis of cytochrome b sequences derived from these subfossils corroborates the monophyly of endemic Malagasy primates. Our results support the close relationship of sloth lemurs to living indriids, as has been hypothesized on morphological grounds. In contrast, Megaladapis does not show a sister-group relationship with the living genus Lepilemur. Thus, the classification of the latter in the family Megaladapidae is misleading. By correlating the geographic location of subfossil specimens with relative amplification success, we reconfirm the global trend of increased success rates of ancient DNA recovery from nontropical localities.Madagascar ͉ phylogeny ͉ subfossil ͉ historical biogeography A t least 15% of living primate species are endemic to Madagascar, an island that comprises Ͻ0.4% of Earth's land surface area. These primates are considered to belong to a single clade (1-4) that descends from a single common ancestor that colonized Madagascar from Africa sometime in the early Tertiary period (5-7). They represent a remarkable array of primate life histories and morphologies and, given our knowledge of their phylogenetic unity and biogeographic history, can be considered a definitive example of Darwinian radiation in geographic isolation. Yet, there is also a considerable number of extinct primates from Madagascar, all identified from subfossil remains. More than 16 species (8) from at least seven genera have been recovered, predominantly from Holocene sites throughout Madagascar (9). Although now extinct, the fact that at least some species existed as recently as 500 years ago (10) and all but the genus Babakotia are known to have existed within the past 2,000 years (11) indicates that they were the evolutionary contemporaries of the living lemurs. What is not clear is whether their phylogenetic relationships to the living lemurs challenge our biogeographic hypotheses of Malagasy primate evolution. If we were to discover that any or all of the extinct Malagasy primates fall outside of the lemuriform clade, then we would have to revise our hypothesis of a single primate colonization of Madagascar.The phylogenetic relationships and behavioral ecology of the subfossil lemurs have been studied extensively by using morpholo...

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The discovery of a Middle to Late Triassic ( approximately 225 to 230 million years old) terrestrial vertebrate fauna from Madagascar is reported. This fauna documents a temporal interval not well represented by continental vertebrate assemblages elsewhere in the world. It contains two new prosauropod dinosaurs, representing some of the earliest dinosaur occurrences known globally. This assemblage provides information about the poorly understood transition to the dinosaur-dominated faunas of the latest Triassic.