Zootaxa 3507: 79–83 (2012) ISSN 1175-5326 (print edition) www.mapress.com/zootaxa/ ZOOTAXA Copyright © 2012 · Magnolia Press Article ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:47AC4761-EF05-47C9-AC63-DA19246AFD25 A proposal for the common names for species of Chiropotes (Pitheciinae: Primates) ADRIAN. A. BARNETT1,2,16, LILIAM P. PINTO3,4, JÚLIO CÉSAR BICCA-MARQUES5, STEPHEN F. FERRARI6, MARCELO GORDO7, PATRICIA G. GUEDES8, MARIA APARECIDA LOPES9, JUAN C. OPAZO10, MARCIO PORT-CARVALHO11, RICARDO RODRIGUES DOS SANTOS12, RAFAELA F. SOARES13, WILSON R. SPIRONELLO2, LIZA M. VEIGA13, TATIANA MARTINS VIEIRA 14 & SARAH A. BOYLE15 1Centre for Research in Evolutionary and Environmental Anthropology, Roehampton University, London, England 2Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, AM, Brazil 3Curso de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil 4Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação da Biodiversidade Amazônica, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiver- sidade, Manaus, AM, Brazil 5Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil 6Dept. Biologia, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão, SE, Brazil 7Dept. Biologia, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, AM, Brazil 8Dept. Mastozoologia, Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil 9Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil 10Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile 11Instituto Florestal de São Paulo, Estação Experimental de Bauru, SP, Brazil 12Centro de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais, Universidade Federal de Maranhão, Chapadinha, MA, Brazil 13Dept. Zoologia, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, PA, Brazil 14Programa de Pós Graduação em Zoologia do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, PA, Brazil 15Dept. Biology, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee, USA 16Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected] Abstract The common English name for the genus Chiropotes is currently bearded saki. We propose the use of “cuxiú” as the com- mon name for Chiropotes species, arguing that this term not only has deeper cultural and historical roots, but would mesh with the common name currently in use over the vast majority of the genus range. Cuxiú (pronounced “coosh-e-oo”) would be phylogenetically and taxonomically more appropriate, and less ambiguous, than the currently used term, and remove the implied close affiliation between Pithecia and Chiropotes. Finally, as an indigenously-derived name, it would fit with the common names in use for the other two genera in the sub-family Pitheciinae (uacari, Cacajao; saki, Pithecia), both of which also have indigenous origins. Key words: Bearded saki, Chiropotes, Cuxiú, Pithecidae Pitheciin systematics Together with Cacajao Lesson 1840 and Pithecia Desmarest 1804, the genus Chiropotes Lesson 1840 forms the Pitheciinae, a sub-family of the Pithecidae (Groves 2005). In current English usage (e.g. IUCN 2011), monkeys of the three genera are generally referred to as sakis (Pithecia), uacaris (Cacajao), and bearded sakis (Chiropotes). The terms for the former two genera are derived from indigenous names for the monkeys (Barnett 2004), whereas the latter is the English form of the equivalent name in German, “Bartsaki”, which was coined by Hick (1968). Common names generally use salient visual characters both to distinguish between species (Barnett 2004), and to provide a verbal grouping for visually similar animals (Yoon 2009; Atran & Medin 2010). Aside from the Accepted by P. Gaubert: 31 Aug. 2012; published: 5 Oct. 2012 79 occasional divergence, such folk taxonomies generally approximate well to scientific taxonomy (e.g. Fleck et al. 1999). However, while the English common name for Chiropotes refers to a salient characteristic of the animal it also implies a closer affinity between Chiropotes and Pithecia than between either of these genera and Cacajao. As noted by Opazo et al. (2006), this implication is incorrect. The superficial similarity between Chiropotes and Pithecia is restricted to the distinctive, long bushy tail, which is notably lacking in Cacajao, the only platyrrhine where the tail is highly reduced (Figure 1). The term “bearded” as a distinguishing factor is based on the fact that both adult male and female Chiropotes have hypertrophied hair on the lower jaw, a feature absent in Pithecia. In Cacajao, a variable amount of facial hair is also present. Although this never approaches the beard of Chiropotes, it does confound the use of the beard as a diagnostic criterion for the informal distinction of the genus Chiropotes within the pitheciines. We argue that correcting this error is important because, in a rare moment of phylogenetic unanimity, all recent published studies of the topic consider Cacajao and Chiropotes to be sister taxa within the subfamily Pitheciinae. Such studies have included morphological (Rosenberger 1981; Horovitz et al. 1998; Kay 1990; Marroig & Cheverud 2004), molecular (Canavez et al. 1999; von Dornum & Ruvolo 1999; Opazo et al. 2006; Chatterjee et al. 2009; Wildman et al. 2009), cytogenetic (Moura-Pensin et al. 2001; Finotelo et al. 2010), and biochemical (Schneider et al. 1995) analyses. According to Schneider (2000), Pithecia diverged from the pitheciin lineage some 3 million years before the separation of Chiropotes and Cacajao. It is important that the correct distinctions are recognised, as there are strong behavioural and ecological differences among the three genera, including group size, degree of specialization for seed predation, and even distribution patterns (i.e. allopatry between Cacajao and Chiropotes) (Norconk 2001). Pitheciin taxonomic history Taxonomic unanimity has, however, taken time to establish: historically, the three genera were first assigned to the long-abolished Simia (Cacajao and Chiropotes by Humboldt (1811), and Pithecia by Linnaeus (1766)), all were subsequently transferred to Pithecia by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1812), a grouping then divided by Lesson (1840) into Cacajao, Pithecia (Pithecia) and Pithecia (Chiropotes). The latter was first elevated to full generic status (as Cheiropotes) by Reichenbach (1862), and then amended to Chiropotes by Gray (1870), although later publications, such as the influential A Review of the Primates (Elliot 1913), still retained it as a sub-genus of Pithecia. Consequently, the presence of “saki” as a shared element in the common names of Pithecia and Chiropotes appear to be at least partly rooted in these historical groupings. Common name use: cuxiú In addition to being phylogenetically misleading, the common English name in current usage for the monkeys of the genus Chiropotes is also both ungainly and inconsistent with the use of indigenous names for the other pitheciine genera (Barnett 2004). There is, however, a common name for Chiropotes that pre-dates “bearded saki”, and which does not suggest an erroneously close link with Pithecia. This name is “cuxiú”. When describing, as Simia satanas, a specimen of Chiropotes satanas, Humboldt (1811) gave the common names as “couxio” and “couchio du Grand Para”. In the same publication Humboldt (1811: 313) also introduced the term “chiropotes”, formed from the Greek words “hand” and “drinker”, in the following manner ‘’J’ai nommé le Capucin Simia chiropotes, de , main, et , buveur’’, referring specifically to the habit of drinking water by immersing the hand in the liquid. While “hand-drinker” would be a transliteration of the genus name, it is now redundant as a descriptor, given that this type of behaviour has now been observed in many other monkey species. The beard was mentioned in the description of this specimen, but was not given any special significance. In Elliot (1913) both Pithecia and Chiropotes were called sakis, with Chiropotes species having such common names of red-backed saki and black saki. However, consistent with Humboldt’s naming, the type species of the modern genus Chiropotes was named by Lesson (1840) as “Pithecia (Chiropotes) couxio”. Although “Chiropotes couxio” is unavailable because of its synonymy with Chiropotes satanas (earlier described as “Cebus satanas” by Hoffmannseg 1807 [see Groves 2005: 146]), the use of the word cuxiú in 1840 does highlight the antiquity of the association of this name with the evolutionary lineage of pitheciins that Chiropotes represents. 80 · Zootaxa 3507 © 2012 Magnolia Press BARNETT ET AL. FIGURE 1. A long bushy tail and no beard characterize (A) Pithecia, which is taxonomically less related to (B) short-tailed, beardless Cacajao and (C) long bushy-tailed, bearded Chiropotes than these two genera are to each other, yet both Chiropotes and Pithecia are currently called sakis. All three photos are courtesy of Luiz Claudio Marigo. Additionally, the current common names for Cacajao and Pithecia (uacari and saki, respectively) are both derived from indigenous names (Barnett 2004). By adopting the indigenous word cuxiú (pronounced: coosh-e-oo) as the common name for the genus Chiropotes, we would be using a name employed throughout the Brazilian Amazon that is well-established in the academic literature written in Portuguese (Ferreira 1792; Goeldi 1893; Deane 1967; Ayres 1981; Arruda 1985; Veiga 2006; Pinto 2008) and that differs only orthographically from the use of “couxio” or “couchio” in Humboldt (1811). Hence a similar rule