Showing posts with label Lemurs on Wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lemurs on Wikipedia. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Back to Wiki

My newest work (and Featured Article candidate) on Wikipedia: Fork-marked lemur.

I'm also working to submit an abstract to the 27th Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) Conference in hopes of presenting my hypothesis about the origins of object manipulation in simian primates.  As always, this was inspired by Obi and Janga, and my work is dedicated to them.

Friday, August 23, 2013

90% of all lemur species likely to be extinct in 20-25 years.

According to a news report in The Telegraph, the IUCN claims that 90% of all lemur species could be extinct in 20 to 25 years unless a 3-year, $7.6 million program to help local communities in Madagascar gets underway immediately.  (I'd donate if I had a job!)  I'm doing what I can on my end by trying to get this news blurb mentioned on the main page of Wikipedia.  Keep an eye out for it and pass the news along.

Friday, August 2, 2013

My Wikipedia work gets a noteable mention!

Okay, this really isn't about lemurs, but their cousins: slow lorises.  With that said...

I learned today from Dr. Anna Nekaris, the world's leading slow loris researcher and conservationist, that my work on Wikipedia got mentioned in a peer-reviewed journal article:
A while back, a group of dedicated Wikipedia editors and I collaborated with Nekaris to develop a series of slow loris Wikipedia articles, one of which was specifically about slow loris conservation--Conservation of slow lorises.  This was in response to a viral YouTube video that was inspiring many people to seek out these animal as pets... which is illegal and seriously hampering conservation efforts.  If you haven't heard about this, please read!
At least one (possibly 4) new species of dwarf lemur have been discovered in Madagascar:


The Lavasoa dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus lavasoensis) is found in only 3 isolated forest fragments in southern Madagascar, and the genetic analysis suggests many new species of dwarf lemur exist on the island.  I wrote an article about it on Wikipedia, and it may get featured on the main page soon (under In the News): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavasoa_dwarf_lemur

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Welcome to the family (Cheirogaleidae)

Two new species were described on (or around) 26 March 2013.  Read the Live Science article Tiny Lemur Twins Are 2 New Species.  Special thanks to fellow lemur enthusiast Margie Deeb for bringing it to my attention.

Mouse lemurs (genus Microcebus) are the smallest of the lemurs, measuring just a few inches in length and weighing less than 100 g (less than 3.5 oz).  This also makes them the smallest living primates.  (Believe it or not, some potentially close relatives of our ancient ancestors were once smaller.)  Mouse lemurs were popularized in the Madagascar movies and related miniseries by the character, Mort.

Since I write lemur articles on Wikipedia, I have created some basic articles for these two new species to summarize the research.
As always, more lemur-related Wikipedia articles are on the way.