TARSIER BRAIN COMPONENT COMPOSITION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SYSTEMATICS

The taxonomic position of Tarsius has been a topic of some debate. Rec ent molecular and anatomical studies have shown that tarsiers share a number of derived traits with Anthropoids. These include aspects of th eir reproductive biology and aspects of their olfactory and visual sys tems. It has, therefore, been suggested that, despite a number of conv ergences with strepsirhine primates, tarsiers should be classified wit h the Anthropoid primates. We use comparative analyses of relative pri mate brain part volumes to determine whether Tarsius should be classif ied as a Haplorhine. We show that, for each of seven brain components whose relative size discriminates unequivocally between Strepsirhines and Haplorhines, the tarsiers fall in the Haplorhine distribution. The se results confirm their classification with the Haplorhines.