LEMURS UTTERING AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PHYLOGENETIC RECONSTRUCTION.

The study of vocal communication in lemurs may contribute to our understanding of the evolution of Malagasy prosimians and may provide useful tools to define relations between taxa. In this study, we investigated vocal communication in lemurs of Madagascar, using different approaches. We first collected a huge data set of vocalizations from captive and wild true lemurs (Eulemur sp.) and performed several acoustic analyses in order to characterize source- and filter-related features of these species uttering. These measures were utilized to carry out some distance and phylogenetic analyses within the genus Eulemur using acoustic datasets. These analyses provided a useful approach to study lemurs’ phylogeny.