Turvey, Samuel T;
Ortiz, Alejandra;
Granger, Matthew;
Brace, Selina;
Henriksen, Rasmus Amund;
Yang, Qingping;
Nguyễn, Tuấn Anh;
... Chen, Xi; + view all
(2025)
Morphometric characterisation of Holocene mandibles expands the ecological baseline for understanding gibbon extinction dynamics.
Royal Society Open Science
, 12
(6)
, Article 242065. 10.1098/rsos.242065.
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Abstract
Human activities have driven biodiversity loss for millennia, and conservation of ‘refugee species’ that survive as remnant populations requires insights from historical baselines. However, reconstructing the past distribution and ecology of such species is challenging due to data limitations with specimen-based archives. Here, we assess the taxonomic identity of two gibbon mandibles from the Wumingshan Neolithic site in Guangxi, China. Although ancient DNA extraction was unsuccessful, a suite of linear and geometric morphometric analyses using dental and mandibular characters reveals that these mandibles fall within or close to variation shown by extant Chinese Nomascus gibbons and can be assigned to the cao vit gibbon N. nasutus. This is now one of the world’s rarest mammals, with a surviving population of 74 individuals in one site. Comparative assessment of bioclimatic, abiotic and anthropogenic parameters for Wumingshan and other sites where N. nasutus historically occurred reveals the species was formerly a landscape generalist but is now restricted to a high-elevation refugium with reduced human pressures. Our multidisciplinary analyses provide a new baseline on niche requirements and vulnerability for N. nasutus with implications for population management, demonstrating the importance of integrating environmental archives into conservation planning.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Morphometric characterisation of Holocene mandibles expands the ecological baseline for understanding gibbon extinction dynamics |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1098/rsos.242065 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242065 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2025 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| Keywords: | Cao vit gibbon, conservation palaeobiology, geometric morphometrics, historical baselines, Nomascus nasutus, refugee species |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10209143 |
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