EVOLUTIONARY SYSTEMATICS OF THE CHIMPANZEE: IMMUNODIFFUSION COMPUTER APPROACH.
Abstract
An immunodiffusion computer approach to systematics, based on a set theoretical interpretation of species comparisons in modified Ouchterlony plates, was used to process the data of over 4300 such comparisons obtained with 148 antisera to proteins of various hominoid species. The resultant species placement tables demonstrate that the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) barely diverges from the pigmy chimpanzee (Pan panicus), slightly diverges from man and gorilla, and shows increasingly more marked divergence from orangutan, gibbons, cercopithecoids, and ceboids. The method for constructing phylogenetic trees from these species placement tables was described and applied to the data. In the Hominoidea the most distant common ancestor separates the gibbon branch from the remaining hominoids, while the next most distant common ancestor separates the orangutan from man, chimpanzee, and gorilla. Chimpanzee and man may have the most recent common ancestor, but it is just as probable that gorilla and chimpanzee or that man and gorilla have the most recent common ancestor. On assuming proportionality between antigenic divergence and time of ancestral branching and on arbitrarily taking the cercopithecoid-hominoid separation as 30 million years, the chimpanzee-man-gorilla separations were dated at about 6 million years, the orangutan at 14 million years, and the gibbon at about 19 million years. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 01, 1969
- Accession Number
- AD0690501
Entities
People
- Emily Poulik
- Morris Goodman
- Walter Farris
- William Moore
Organizations
- Wayne State University