Kipunji

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iKipunji

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Family:	Cercopithecidae
Genus:	Rungwecebus Davenport, 2006
Species:	R. kipunji

Binomial name

Rungwecebus kipunji
(Jones et al., 2005)

The Kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji) is a species of Old World monkey that lives in the highland forests of Tanzania. Also known as the Highland Mangabey, it is about three feet long and has long brown fur, which stands in tufts on the sides and top of its head. Its face and eyelids are uniformly black. The Kipunji is arboreal in its habits. All the males of this mangabey emit a loud call to coordinate spacing between different groups. The Kipunji has a unique call, described as a 'honk-bark', which distinguishes it from its close relatives the Grey-cheeked Mangabey and the Black Crested Mangabey, whose calls are described as 'whoop-gobbles'.

Perhaps fewer than 1,000 of the animals live in the highland Ndundulu Forest Reserve, an unprotected forest adjacent to Udzungwa Mountains National Park, and in a disjunct population 250 miles away on Mount Rungwe and in Kitulo National Park, which is adjacent to it. The forest at Rungwe is highly degraded, and fragmentation of the remaining forest threatens to split that population into three smaller populations. The Ndundulu forest is in better shape, but the population there is smaller. The monkey will likely be classified as a critically endangered species.

The Kipunji was independently discovered by two separate teams of researchers, in December 2003 and July 2004, making it the first new African monkey species discovered since the Sun-tailed Monkey in 1984.^[1] Originally assigned to the genus Lophocebus,^[1] genetic and morphological tests showed that it is more closely related to the baboons (genus Papio) than to the other mangabeys in the genus Lophocebus and that the genus is diphyletic, meaning that species with differing genealogies have been mistakenly lumped together. Scientists have assigned it to a new genus, Rungwecebus, named after Mount Rungwe, where it is found.^[2]

Rungwecebus is the first new African primate genus to be described since 1996, when Pseudopotto was first described.^{[citation needed]} DNA analysis has confirmed Rungwecebus as the first new genus for any living monkey species since Allen's Swamp Monkey in 1923, according to researchers.[1]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Jones, Trevor, Carolyn L. Ehardt, Thomas M. Butynski, Tim R. B. Davenport, Noah E. Mpunga, Sophy J. Machaga, Daniela W. De Luca (2005). "The Highland Mangabey Lopocebus kipunji: A New Species of African Monkey". Science 308 (5725): 1161-1164. DOI:10.1126/science.1109191.
^ Davenport, Tim R. B., William T. Stanley, Eric J. Sargis, Daniela W. De Luca, Noah E. Mpunga, Sophy J. Machaga, and Link E. Olson (2006). "A New Genus of African Monkey, Rungwecebus: Morphology, Ecology, and Molecular Phylogenetics". Science. DOI:10.1126/science.1125631.