Prosimian in the context of Lemur

Prosimian in the context of Lemur

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⭐ Core Definition: Prosimian

Prosimians are a group of primates that includes all living and extinct strepsirrhines (lemurs, lorisoids, and adapiforms), as well as the haplorhine tarsiers and their extinct relatives, the omomyiforms, i.e. all primates excluding the simians. They are considered to have characteristics that are more "primitive" (ancestral or plesiomorphic) than those of simians (monkeys, apes, and humans).

Simians emerged within the Prosimians as sister group of the haplorhine tarsiers, and therefore cladistically belong to this group. Simians are thus distinctly closer related to tarsiers than lemurs are. Strepsirrhines bifurcated some 20 million years earlier than the tarsier–simian bifurcation. However, simians are traditionally excluded, rendering prosimians paraphyletic. Consequently, the term "prosimian" is no longer widely used in a taxonomic sense, but is still used to illustrate the behavioral ecology of tarsiers relative to the other primates.

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Prosimian in the context of Monophyletic

In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria:

  1. the grouping contains its own most recent common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population), i.e. excludes non-descendants of that common ancestor
  2. the grouping contains all the descendants of that common ancestor, without exception

Monophyly is contrasted with paraphyly and polyphyly as shown in the second diagram. A paraphyletic grouping meets 1. but not 2., thus consisting of the descendants of a common ancestor, excepting one or more monophyletic subgroups. A polyphyletic grouping meets neither criterion, and instead serves to characterize convergent relationships of biological features rather than genetic relationships – for example, night-active primates, fruit trees, or aquatic insects. As such, these characteristic features of a polyphyletic grouping are not inherited from a common ancestor, but evolved independently.

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Monophyletic ← Monophyly
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Primate → Strepsirrhini → Lemur → Lorisoidea → Adapiformes → Haplorhini → Tarsier → Omomyidae → Simians → Primitive (biology) → Cladistics → Simian → Cladistics → Paraphyletic →