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| From McGraw 2005 |
Willoughby Lowe’s entry within the Eponym Dictionary of Mammals has a few unkind sentences:
He’s additionally infamous for having shot eight specimens of Miss Waldron’s Crimson Colobus Piliocolobus badius waldroni in Ghana in 1933…The colobus was already uncommon and is now considered extinct.
There isn’t any proof that within the Nineteen Thirties the place appropriate forest remained the pink colobus it was uncommon. Certainly within the Seventies massive troupes have been noticed. Lowe did warn—appropriately—that additional lack of forest would have devastating results on it and different species. As well as, offering sequence of specimens was precisely what the Museum instructed collectors to do because it was realised that it is very important research variation between people from the identical location. Lowe’s specimens (12, not 8, are proven within the catalogue) have been joined later by 26 collected by Angus Sales space (1927-1958) (on whom extra in a future article) who was warning much more vociferously in regards to the risks of deforestation which was continuing apace and the benefit of looking the pink colobus for meat.
Willoughby Lowe clearly believed that he and Fannie Waldron had found the monkey named for Miss Waldron. Nevertheless, trying on the catalogue of the Pure Historical past Museum that was not the case. Two had arrived greater than 20 years earlier.
The job of sorting the gathering of mammals introduced again by Lowe and Waldron in 1934 and 1935 from the Gold Coast (Ghana) was given by Martin Hinton, who was in control of mammals, to Robert William Hayman (1905-1985). Hayman made a mistake within the introduction to his paper. He had simply Lowe on the 1933-34 expedition with Miss Waldron additionally current in 1934-35. That’s incorrect. Waldron and Lowe travelled collectively on each.
Hayman named the pink colobus as a brand new subspecies, Colobus badius waldroni. In his description he in contrast these specimens from Goaso with the nominate subspecies:
A pink Colobus carefully associated to the Liberia and Sierra Leone kind, Colobus badius badius Kerr, however differing within the distribution of the black within the pelage. In true badius the black extends from the entrance of the brow again over head, neck, shoulders, and higher arms, all of the again, and thence on to the outer facet of the thighs so far as the knee. The black on the surface of the thighs extends behind to fulfill the white perineal space. The tail is darkish reddish on the basal half, darkening to black on the apical half.
On this new Gold Coast race a sequence of 11 specimens (six grownup male skins and skulls and one immature male, three grownup feminine skins and skulls, and one grownup feminine in alcohol) reveals the next fixed variations:—The brow is darkish pink, deepening on the crown to black. The black both doesn’t prolong to the thighs in any respect, as within the majority, or, at most, as in a single specimen goes no additional than half means down the centre of the surface of the thigh, not passing behind to the again of the thigh. The tail is jet-black above and under all through.
One of many males, represented by a pores and skin and cranium was chosen as the sort (holotype) for the brand new subspecies: ‘Collected at Goaso, Ashanti, December 31, 1933, by Willoughby P. Lowe’
Hayman went on to notice:
The entire sequence reveals little variation in color. In a single feminine pores and skin the thighs have a skinny median streak of blackish brown fairly slim, and the again of the thigh is broadly pink, as is the entire of the thigh in the remainder of the sequence. Within the British Museum Assortment is a really younger pores and skin from Bibianaha [Bibiani], Gold Coast (Spurrell, 12.6.20.1), which reveals all of the characters of this race with the only exception of the tail, which is especially reddish under, though fully black above from root to tip.
I’ve a lot pleasure in connecting with this remarkably good-looking discovery the title of Miss Waldron, who contributed a lot to the success of the expedition.
The specimens collected by Spurrell in 1912 are at the moment listed within the catalogue as Colobus (Piliocolobus) badius waldroni.
Hayman will need to have realised that Spurrell’s pink colobus was of the identical subspecies he had described from the brand new sequence of specimens. Bibiani is lower than 30 miles from Goaso.
Thus we now have a state of affairs during which the title of the unique collector was ignored as an eponym. I can see two or three the reason why one of many later specimens was chosen as the sort and why Miss Waldron’s title was chosen. The higher vary of grownup women and men introduced again by Lowe and Waldron enabled a higher certainty of separation from the nominate subspecies. Secondly, I believe museum workers have been informed when potential to honour Fannie Waldron the perfect they may. Cash was very tight within the Nineteen Thirties. Grateful thanks and recognition could have introduced funding for additional journeys from Miss Waldron. She had at the least part-funded the primary expedition and doubtless wholly funded the second. A fish, a chicken and a mammal have been duly named. Thirdly, Spurrell (Herbert George Flaxman Spurrell, 1877-1918, on whom extra in a later article) was lifeless.
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| This glorious comparability is from McGraw (2005) |
When it comes to taxonomy, Reginald Innes Pocock (1863-1947) modified the generic title within the paper that adopted instantly on from Hayman’s in Proceedings of the Zoological Society. As will be seen it was Pocock (engaged on mammals within the Pure Historical past Museum after retiring as Superintendent of London Zoo) who requested Lowe to deliver again a specimen preserved in spirit from the second expedition:
On his return in 1934 from the primary of his two latest expeditions to Ashanti, Mr. Willoughby Lowe knowledgeable me that he had shot feminine examples of the Crimson Colobus (Procolobus badius waldroni) displaying a swelling of the exterior genitalia which he had by no means beforehand noticed in any representatives of this genus. The swelling in query, clearly related in its nature to that of Baboons (Papio), Mangabeys (Cercocebus), and of some species assigned to Macaca, was clearly indicated, though in a shrivelled and in any other case distorted situation in two of his dried skins. For the reason that phenomenon in query had apparently by no means been described, and even recorded, in any consultant of this household of Monkeys, I begged him, earlier than beginning on his second expedition to the identical district, to deliver again, if potential, a specimen of this monkey preserved in alcohol or formalin. To his variety acquiescence on this request I owe the chance of describing and figuring not solely the catamental swelling in query, however different exterior characters of a Crimson Colobus for essentially the most half beforehand identified solely from dried skins. A comparability of the characters with these of examples of the Black and White Colobus Monkeys recorded in my paper on the exterior characters of the Catarrhine Monkeys (Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond, 1926, pp. 1479-1579) means that the 2 predominant divisions of those monkeys could also be generically distinguished; and for the reason that title Colobus belongs primarily to the “Black and White” part, typified by polykomos (=ursinus), the pink part could also be provisionally assigned to Procolobus, its oldest obtainable title, with verus van Bren. because the the sort species.
…Rochebrune…additionally proposed the generic title Piliocolobus for one or two totally different sorts of “pink ” species, and Allen chosen badius as the sort. It stays to be seen if there are generic variations between Procolobus and Piliocolobus.
Quick ahead to 2024 and the accepted generic title is Piliocolobus.
Hayman’s retention of Miss Waldron’s Crimson Colobus within the species now often called Piliocolobus badius, however as a brand new subspecies, appears completely cheap since there’s a sequence of pink colobus kinds alongside the forest areas of West Africa which have develop into delineated by river techniques and geological options. Nevertheless, it was inevitable given the species ideas being employed on some teams of mammals within the latter a part of the twentieth century and past that P. badius could be cut up. Thus we now have Piliocolobus waldroni (or infuriatingly in order to supposedly agree with the foundations of nomenclature on utilizing the right gender of the latin genitive eponym in particular names, Piliocolobus waldronae. That stupidity appears to have been stopped however it’s beneath that title that the species is described within the Primate quantity of Handbook of the Mammals of the World revealed in 2013. Equally infuriating is the truth that the ‘cut up’ was based mostly on the mitochondrial genome of a single particular person. As an apart, I do discover it wonderful that in no different department of science are choices made by one particular person or faculty of thought so readily accepted as gospel by others in basically the identical subject. Whereas there could also be just a little from side to side, by and enormous and for a time at the least, the brand new designation is simply accepted.
Turning into slowed down in arcane taxonomic niceties doesn’t reply the urgent query of whether or not any of Miss Waldron’s Crimson Colobus stay alive. The devastating losses attributable to destruction of its forest habitat and by trying to find human meals have been such that the species has, after searches, been declared extinct however for that conclusion to be challenged after native hunters throughout the border within the Tanoé Swamp Forest of Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) have claimed to have seen it, to know its name, and have produced skins as proof. Nevertheless, there appears to have been no additional constructive information up to now 15 years. The IUCN Crimson Checklist (the place it’s listed as a species) has it as ‘Critically Endangered (Presumably Extinct)’. Whether or not it’s a true organic species or a type of P. badius is immaterial to the conservation message: whenever you lose habitats you lose their inhabitants. The entire ecosystem (for need of a greater, non-teleological, time period) is gone. The historical past of how this took place was outlined in a paper by Oates, Struhsaker & Whitesides in 1997:
Three subspecies of forest primate are identified solely from southwestern Ghana and components of neighboring Côte d’Ivoire to the east. These are the white-naped mangabey (Cercocebus atys lunulatus), the Roloway guenon (Cercopithecus diana roloway), and Miss Waldron’s pink colobus (Procolobus badius waldroni)…The rainforest space the place these endemic primates happen has undergone very fast improvement since World Battle II. Logging exercise has been extra intense than in virtually another a part of tropical Africa, and many individuals have moved into the area to domesticate the land because it has been opened up. Logging, farming and human inhabitants development within the area have been accompanied by the elevated looking of untamed mammals and bigger birds for meat, a lot of which has been traded out of the instant space on the market in cities.
Beolens B, Watkins M, Grayson M. 2009. The Eponym Dictionary of Mammals. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins College Press
Hayman RW 1935. On a group of mammals from the Gold Coast. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1935, 915-937.
McGraw WS. 2005. Replace on the seek for Miss Waldron’s Colobus monkey. Internatikonal Journal of Primatology 26, 605-619.
Oates JF, Struhsaker TT, Whitesides GH. 1996/97. Extinction faces Ghana’s Crimson Colobus monkey and different domestically endemic subspecies. Primate Conservation (17), 138-144.
Pocock RI. 1935. The exterior characters of a feminine Crimson Colobus Monkey (Procolobus badius waldroni). Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1935, 939-944.