Species Boundaries among Treeshrews

This summer, the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, under the advisement of Dr. Eric Sargis (Yale) and Dr. Neal Woodman (Smithsonian), co-sponsored a Yale undergraduate intern to focus on the large treeshrew (Tapaia tana) from Borneo, Sumatra, and several smaller islands in the Malay Archipelago. Tupaia tana has a complicated taxonomic history, with 15 subspecies currently recognized within this species. Previous studies have focused on pelage variation, but T. tana has never been analyzed with a modern, integrative approach that synthesizes morphometric and molecular data. Hence, the recognized subspecific variation may actually represent species-level diversity in some cases, which would have conservation implications for this poorly studied species. This project builds Drs. Sargis and Woodman’s previous studies of the common treeshrew (T. glis), a species complex in which they recognized four additional species based on our morphometric and molecular analyses. The project addresses questions such as 1) does T. tana include multiple lineages that should be recognized as distinct species and 2) how did biogeographic variables affect the divergence of populations in this taxon?

The undergraduate researcher, Maya Juman, was involved in multiple aspects of this project. At the SMNH, the Juman learned how to x-ray museum study skins and measure taxonomically informative features of hand morphology from the x-rays. At the YPM, the Juman continued to measure x-rays and learn how to statistically analyze the completed dataset. This project could lead to an expanded senior thesis project, a professional presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists (at the USNM in June 2019), a peer-reviewed publication in a zoological journal, and an IUCN Red List conservation status reassessment and/or several additional species assessments.


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