1. Taxonomy: the assignment of organisms to categories.

2. Hominoidea (hominoids): the superfamily containing humans and apes.

3. Phylogeny: genetic relatedness based on common ancestry.

1. Organisms are placed in classifications, which are arranged hierarchically according to degree of genetic relatedness.

2. Phylogenetic classification is a descending hierarchy of classifications, from most inclusive to least inclusive (see figure 4.1 in the textbook).

3. Species are constituted by organisms whose mating produces viable and fertile offspring.

4. See table 4.1 for a complete statement of the phylogenetic classification of modern humans.

1. Similarities that organisms share because of common ancestry are called homologies.

2. The presence of homologies is the principal factor in determining how organisms are assigned to taxonomic categories.

1. Analogies are similarities between species that are the result of similar adaptation to similar selective pressures--analogies are not the result of common ancestry.

2. The process which leads to analogies is called convergent evolution.

1. Prosimians and anthropoids constitute the two suborders of primates.

2. 30 million years ago, prosimians were driven from niches by better adapted anthropoids.

1. Most of the remaining prosimians, by far, are lemurs.

2. These live only in Madagascar, which separated from Africa prior to the development of anthropoids.

3. Tarsiers survived in Asia, where there are monkeys, by adapting to night conditions (monkeys are not nocturnal).

1. Working with wild communities in the Ranomafana National Park in Madagascar, University of Texas at Austin students Jennifer Burns and Chris Howard recorded behavioral and ecological data on two species of lemurs over a six-month period.

2. Burns and Howard investigated the implications of "dominance," "leadership," "competition," "reproductive stress," and "male versus female roles" within lemur communities.

1. Evolutionary changes in vision probably occurred in response to the pressures of an arboreal habitat.

2. Binocular, stereoscopic vision and color vision may have been selected due to the improved depth perception it endows (locomotion, catching insects, identifying edible fruits).

1. There are two anthropoid infraorders: platyrrhines (flat-nosed, New World monkeys) and catarrhines (sharp-nosed, Old World monkeys, hominoids).

2. Unlike hominoids, monkeys’ rear and fore limbs articulate from their bodies as do dogs’.

3. Most monkeys have tails.

1. New World monkeys’ traits: universally arboreal, some brachiate, some have prehensile tails (among primates, a trait exclusive to the New World).

2. The brachiation of New World monkeys and the brachiation of gibbons constitute an analogy.

1. Old World monkeys are both terrestrial and arboreal.

2. Significant distinctions existing between arboreal and terrestrial Old World monkeys include size (arboreal monkeys are smaller than terrestrial monkeys) and sexual dimorphism (terrestrial males are significantly larger and fiercer than terrestrial females, while little or no such differentiation exists among arboreal monkeys).

1. Hominids (humans and their fossil ancestors).

2. Pongids ("great apes": gorillas, chimpanzees, and orangutan).

3. Hylobatids (gibbons and siamangs).

4. Recent biochemical evidence suggests that gorillas and chimpanzees are almost as closely related to humans as they are to each other.

1. Gibbons are small, arboreal, mate for life, and produce few offspring.

2. Their principal mode of locomotion is brachiation.

1. Orangutans are relatively large (up to 200 pounds), solitary, and markedly sexually dimorphic.

2. Orangutans move between arboreal and terrestrial habitats.

1. Gorillas are large (up to 400 pounds), the most sexually dimorphic of all primates, and are primarily terrestrial.

2. They live in relatively stable social groups, typically led by a mature silver-back male.

1. There are two kinds of chimpanzee: the common (Pan troglodytes) and the pygmy (Pan paniscus).

2. The common chimpanzee is found in western central Africa and western Africa.

3. Size range is up to 200 pounds, and sexual dimorphism is proportionally the same as in humans.

4. Chimpanzee social organization is relatively well-known, because of the longitudinal studies done by Goodall and other primatologists.

1. Dr. Birutá Galdikas has been working since the 1960s to study and preserve orangutans in Indonesia.

2. Orangutans are on the brink of extinction largely due to habitat loss.

1. Bonobos belong to the species Pan paniscus.

2. Bonobos live in the humid forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

3. Bonobo communities are female-centered, peace-loving, and egalitarian.

4. Bonobos frequently use sex to avoid conflict within the community.

1. Neotony and life in cooperative social groups allow primates to learn behavior from their fellows, rather than relying only on genetically encoded behaviors.

2. Learned behavior has been observed in monkeys as well as apes.

1. Tool use allows primates to adapt to a wider range of niches more quickly than physiological adaptation alone (although primates are not the only animals that use tools).

2. Wild chimps have been observed constructing tools.

1. Hunting is a regular and normal component of wild chimpanzee behavior.

2. Hunting by chimps is both opportunistic and planned.

3. Wild chimpanzees have been observed hunting consistently, using cooperative techniques, with some sex specialization (males hunt more than females).

1. The capacity for hunting exists among many different primates, but expression of this capacity can depend upon environmental pressure and opportunity.

2. Observations of chimps and orangutans indicate that aggressive behavior ("warfare," in some chimp cases) may increase when territorial encroachment occurs.

1. Sharing and cooperation are common to most primates; however, humans do it much more complexly.

2. Human foraging bands tend to have a sexual division of labor (e.g., men hunt, women gather); other primates do not.

3. Homo sapiens is the only primate species that engages in food sharing consistently on a large scale.

1. Human females do not experience estrus.

2. Marriage and kinship are two exclusively, universally human systems that give identity and stability to certain types of human relationships in a way that is absent from other primate social systems.

1. Individual fitness is the number of direct descendents an individual organism has.

2. Inherent in this notion, as seen in terms of natural selection, is the implication that any individual’s fitness competes with that of its conspecifics.

3. A model attributing a drive to protect one’s individual fitness to all organisms could not explain altruistic or self-sacrificing behavior.

4. Inclusive fitness is a theoretical concept developed to account for unselfish behavior and is defined as "reproductive success measured by the representation [in succeeding generations] of genes one shares with other, related animals."

1. Physical anthropologists have studied the links between deforestation and malaria and the disappearance of primate species.

2. Archaeologists have viewed deforestation in the context of resource use by ancient farmers and herders.

3. Linguistic anthropologists have studied how people name and classify plants and forests resources.

4. Cultural anthropologists have documented the varied uses people make of the forest and its products.

1. Strategies designed to slow down and mitigate the effects of deforestation must consider the needs, wishes, and abilities of the people living in or near the forests and the global community.

2. Effective environmentalism requires culturally informed negotiation with political and economic interests at the local, regional, national, and international levels.