Highland Mangabey” (Lophocebus kipunji) Drawing by Zina Deretsky, NSF		Primate
		Conservation
		Inc.
		UPDATE    2005

Director's Report

      I was about to send the PCI’s annual newsletter this spring when I received news that a PCI grantee had discovered a new primate in Africa. Because the article announcing the discovery was to be published in Science, this exciting news had to wait until after its publication. So I have added an extra page to PCI’s update written by the discoverer Caroline Ehardt. I am sure you will find her personal account fascinating. Your donations to PCI helped make this find possible.

New Monkey Species Discovered in Tanzania – the First in Africa in 20 Years

     A completely new species of mangabey, the first new African monkey species to be discovered since 1984, has been quite unexpectedly discovered  in the Ndundulu Forest of the Udzungwa Mountains, Tanzania.  And even more amazing is the fact that it was almost simultaneously discovered in another part of Tanzania, the Southern Highlands, some 350 km away from Ndundulu, completely independently by another research team working in those mountains.  It has been named the Highland mangabey and given the taxonomic name of Lophocebus kipunji.  The common name reflects the fact that it is found in forests at elevations which exceed 1300 m asl, and as high as 2500 m, where temperatures drop to -3°C.  The species name, kipunji (pronounced “kip-oon-jee”), is the name that local people in the Southern Highlands had for the “shy monkey” they reported seeing from time to time in the forests. The story of this unusual monkey’s discovery is one of twists and turns, irony, and pure serendipity.  But what has resulted from it are increased conservation efforts in the two sites to try to protect what now will be one of the most endangered primates in the world.

     It was in the process of carrying out my conservation ecology study of the endangered Sanje mangabey in the Udzungwa Mountains (funded by PCI and other conservation donors) that my research group found the new monkey species.  In three previous visits to Ndundulu Forest Reserve, I had not been able to locate any of what a group of Danish ornithologists had reported to be Sanje mangabeys in this area.  This was of grave concern because the Sanje mangabey (a species in the other genus of mangabeys, Cercocebus sanjei) is also one of the world’s most endangered primates.  If the reported subpopulation in Ndundulu had been lost since the Danes had reported seeing them in the early 1990’s, then the Sanje mangabey total population would be even smaller than we thought, and hence more on the verge of extinction.  This is why I decided to acquire funds to intensively search in Ndundulu, and if Sanje mangabeys could be found, to try to get as accurate a count of how many were left there as possible.  Yet when we went into Ndundulu, now armed with exact mapped locations of where the supposed Sanje mangabeys were seen (given to us by one of the Danish researchers), it was a strange brown monkey with an upright, broad crest of hair on its head, a completely black face, and a tail that is white for the last half or so of its length that we encountered instead!  Not only was this not a Sanje mangabey, it was a monkey that was completely new to science.  I and my colleague Tom Butynski identified the new monkey as a mangabey, but one that is completely unlike any other mangabey in its morphology, and therefore a new species.  Obviously the Danish ornithologists, not being specialists on primates and never having actually seen a Sanje mangabey, simply misidentified what they saw as the Sanje mangabeys they expected to see.

Photo by C. Ehardt

     The new mangabey is very arboreal, staying in the high canopy of trees, and appears to be very frugivorous (fruit-eating) in its diet.  It also is very difficult to locate; when disturbed it hides in the canopy and becomes very still and quiet.  And unlike all of the other known mangabeys, it lacks a loud-call vocalization known as a “whoop-gobble.”  Instead, it has a very unique call that we have termed a “honk-bark,” which is given most often by adult males and when groups of Highland mangabeys encounter one another in the forest.  In our efforts to determine how many groups of these new mangabeys still exist in Ndundulu Forest, we were able to locate only 3 groups.  There are obviously very few left in this forest, raising strong concern about its survival.

     One of the most amazing aspects of the complete story of this new monkey’s discovery is how I came to learn that a team of Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) researchers, carrying out a long-term conservation project in the Southern Highlands of far southwest Tanzania, had discovered this same new species in the distant area known as Rungwe-Livingstone.  After preparing a report on our discovery in Ndundulu and submitting it to the journal Science for publication, I traveled to the capital city of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, to deal with research permits.  While in the city, I learned that Dr. Graeme Patterson of WCS was also there and we agreed to meet to discuss my project, which was largely funded through a grant from WCS.  When we met at an outdoor café, Graeme informed me that Dr. Tim Davenport was also there, wished to meet me as well, and would join us shortly.  This was the first time that Tim and I had met personally, although we knew of each other’s projects in Tanzania.  I was unsure whether to tell Graeme and Tim about the discovery in Ndundulu; Science has a strict press embargo and stipulates that nothing about what will be in your published article in their journal can reach any form of the media before the actual publication appears, including on the websites of your funding organizations.  But I knew that they would be amazed, and that it would be a strong indication of what their funding had contributed to science, so I swore them to secrecy and proceeded to tell them.  As I described the new monkey, I noticed that Tim was looking very agitated and almost in anguish.  As I described the final feature – the tail coloration that is so distinctive among mangabeys – Tim just buried his face in his hands and shook his head.  I said: “Tim, what is the matter?!”  To which he responded:  “This new species is not just in the Udzungwas, it is in the Southern Highlands, also!  And we were preparing to submit a manuscript to Science about our discovery!”  This was an unbelievable shock, for both of us.  Especially given how far apart the two sites are and that the intervening environment is grassland and agricultural development, not the forest that is the habitat of this mangabey.  And it has been the case that surveys of the Southern Highlands and of the Udzungwas had indicated that most of the fauna and flora was very distinct between the two biogeographic areas.  Well, after I looked at pictures Tim had taken of the animals in his site, and after Tim took me to see the animals in the Southern Highlands, and I took him to see the animals in Ndundulu in the Udzungwas, we had no doubt that this was the same new species of mangabey.  Completely unbeknownst to each other, our separate projects had made this amazing discovery, and we only realized it at a totally serendipitous chance meeting in Dar es Salaam!  When we confirmed Tim’s co-discovery, I contacted the editors of Science, pulled the manuscript about our discovery from consideration for publication, and then Tim and his colleagues joined us in writing a new manuscript that reports both of the parallel discoveries.  It is this co-authored report that was published in the 20 May 2005 edition of Science.

     Subsequent to our discovery, I and Tom Butynski attended a workshop to reassess the IUCN Red Listing of all of the African primates.  Based on our data, we have listed the new mangabey as Critically Endangered, based on its extremely limited distribution, fragmentation into two separate populations, and likely extreme low abundance.  And in the next evaluation of the world’s most endangered primates, it will be very close to the top of the list.  We are now petitioning the Tanzanian government to elevate the protective status of the two forest reserves where the only remaining Highland mangabeys are found.  This is especially critical for the Southern Highlands, where there are continuing high levels of habitat destruction, as well as hunting.  Without immediate attention, we may well lose this newly discovered monkey.  And the discovery has led to a renewed realization that we need to redouble our conservation efforts; with the continuing loss of biodiversity, who knows what fascinating new species of primates or other animals and plants we might lose before they are even discovered!

                                    Carolyn L. Ehardt  

 Dept of Anthropology  University of Georgia  Athens, GA  

                        Sincerely, 

Noel Rowe        Director–

nrowe@primate.org

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