PhD Student Jack McBride and Professor Eric Sargis are part of the Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology Lab in Yale’s Department of Anthropology.
Their study investigated body size and sexual dimorphism in the 2 extant genera of dermopterans, the Sunda Colugo (Galeopterus variegatus) and Philippine Colugo (Cynocephalus volans). These are poorly studied gliding mammal species and important taxa for understanding primate origins because they are the only extant members of Dermoptera, the sister taxon to Primates (together forming Primatomorpha).
Their findings highlight a case of female-biased dimorphism in euarchontan mammals and emphasize the importance of treating the extant colugo genera as fundamentally distinct, having undergone independent evolution over the last approximately 11-20 million years.
The paper is available for advanced access in the Journal of Mammalogy: https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyag052.
To learn more about colugos, consider Dr. Norman Lim’s excellent book: Colugo: The Flying Lemur of South-east Asia.
Post reproduced from Yale Anthropology News.
Primates, Jack 
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