A composite estimate of primate phylogeny

TLDR

The study provides a comprehensive phylogenetic estimate for all 203 primate species. The authors constructed a composite tree by applying a parsimony algorithm to more than a hundred prior estimates and used bootstrapping to assess clade certainty, yielding a well‑resolved tree with 160 nodes. The resulting tree, with age estimates for over half its clades, serves as a useful framework for comparative biologists and highlights remaining gaps in primate phylogeny.

Abstract

This paper presents an estimate of the phylogeny of all 203 species of primate. The composite tree is derived by applying a parsimony algorithm to over a hundred previous estimates, and is well resolved, containing 160 nodes. The ages of over half the clades in the tree have been estimated from information in the literature. Bootstrapping has been used to indicate the degree of certainty associated with each clade. The tree will be a useful framework for comparative biologists and shows which areas of primate phylogeny are still only sketchily known.