PHYLOGEOGRAPHY AND PHENOTYPIC EVOLUTION OF MACACA FASCICULARIS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

According to the Island Rule, there is a general evolutionary trend on islands for large-bodied species to become smaller due to a lack of food resources and predators on islands. Evolution of smaller body sizes on islands has been widely studied, but little work has been done to analyze this rule within species, to control for intraspecific phylogenetic relatedness in comparative analyses, or to analyze changes in individual anatomical components, such as brain size and cranial morphology, as body size decreases. My dissertation work explores body size, brain size and skull shape differences between insular and mainland individuals of long-tailed macaques throughout Southeast Asia. In a novel and cross-disciplinary approach, I combined molecular phylogenetics and classical morphological and morphometric analyses to comprehensively analyze the Island Rule in this species.