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Size Disparity in Putative Primate Adaptive Radiations and Other Mammalian Clades.

Jeremiah E Scott¹

¹Department of Medical Anatomical Sciences, College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, California, USA.

American Journal of Biological Anthropology

|April 13, 2026

Summary

This study investigated adaptive radiation in lemurs and platyrrhines by analyzing body mass disparity. While both groups show high size disparity, it doesn't definitively confirm adaptive radiation in mammals.

Keywords:

Lemuriformes Platyrrhini ecological opportunity macroevolution

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Area of Science:

Evolutionary Biology
Paleontology
Primate Evolution

Background:

Adaptive radiation is characterized by rapid diversification of species and traits.
Lemurs (Madagascar) and platyrrhines (Americas) are considered potential primate adaptive radiations.
This study focuses on body mass disparity as a key indicator of adaptive radiation.

Purpose of the Study:

To assess whether lemurs and platyrrhines exhibit exceptional phenotypic disparity in body mass.
To determine if body mass disparity patterns support the hypothesis of adaptive radiation in these primate clades.

Main Methods:

A time-scaled molecular phylogeny of mammals was analyzed.
Clades comparable in age to Lemuriformes and Platyrrhini were sampled.
Phenotypic disparity was quantified using body mass variance, controlling for clade age via phylogenetic regression.

Main Results:

Lemuriforms exhibit high age-adjusted body mass disparity (95th percentile).
Platyrrhines also show significant age-adjusted disparity (84th percentile).
Disparity distributions lacked outliers, positive skew, or bimodality, typical of adaptive radiation signals.

Conclusions:

High body mass disparity in lemurs and platyrrhines is consistent with adaptive radiation.
However, the absence of specific distributional patterns (outliers, skew, bimodality) means size disparity alone does not conclusively prove adaptive radiation.
Further research may be needed to identify definitive signals of adaptive radiation in mammalian evolution.