They look very similar to Kalisks
'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#22I wish they called it confirmed and not discovered It was known about by the locals, they even gave it a name, it's call was very well known even if few had sighted it. They did important scientific work to confirm a distinct species. But they did not discover it unless you discount the local people!
I mean did the locals think of the two species as separate? If not then the discovery of a separate species is what’s important, not the knowledge of the physical population. Or was the population previously unknown to researchers?
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#23The new species is an example of a "cryptic species": a species that is morphologically similar to another species but can be distinguished by DNA. Cryptic species are astoundingly common. A recent paper estimates that each known vertebrate morphological species is, on average, actually two cryptic species. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2064/202...
The "crypto" Greek root can mean "hidden" indeed [1].
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CF%85%CF%80%CF%8...
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#24OOO! Chimpanzee-that! Monkey News.
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#25It's an allopatric population. It's one of the great embarrassments of biology. The question "is this population part of the same 'species' as this other population" is simply not defined in biology when they are allopatric. Look at your country's bird identification guide. If you're in Europe or N. America you'll find lots of "species" that are just allopatric populations accompanied by some mtDNA / sound recording…
A definition that is debatable at the edges doesn’t have to be debatable at the center, so I don’t think it follows that we need to completely throw out the concept. Nature doesn’t provide neat categories, but speciation is nonetheless a real natural phenomenon that isn’t perturbed by having fuzzy boundaries.
Yes I completely agree with every word of this. I hope I didn't give the opposite impression. Clearly the sexual organisms living in one place belong to discrete groups, defined by what breeds with what, no objection to using the word species for those groups in sympatry, and the process by which those species come into existence is extremely important and worth studying (I used to do that). As you say, the problem is that the definition doesn't apply in all situations (e.g. populations that don't live in the same place).
That shouldn't be controversial, but unfortunately the idea that you can and should try to "determine" whether such populations are conspecific is completely entrenched in biology; has been since Linnaeus basically.
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#26It's an allopatric population. It's one of the great embarrassments of biology. The question "is this population part of the same 'species' as this other population" is simply not defined in biology when they are allopatric. Look at your country's bird identification guide. If you're in Europe or N. America you'll find lots of "species" that are just allopatric populations accompanied by some mtDNA / sound recording…
I agree that the species concept is a bit of a mess but how do you conclude that these two populations can still interbreed? From the article I do not get the same suspicion. Even though they mention the "sister species" is 1200km removed this might be true while being a "finished" allopatric speciation. From the paper: "Our fossil calibrated mitochondrial clock analysis estimates the most recent common ancestor of C…
Hi, two answers:
Firstly,
> how do you conclude that these two populations can still interbreed?
I'm saying that people shouldn't spend time asking that question of allopatric populations.
Secondly you're right that I didn't read up on these monkeys. I wanted to rant about species concepts, but I was doing it in a discussion about some doubtless wonderful and very interesting monkeys and I am definitely guilty of not doing justice to them or to the people studying them.
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, I've looked at that before, but I don't think I've ever read it properly. Are you sure it's not missing the simple answer? Give up the idea that the question of whether populations are "conspecific" should be assigned a meaning. Words are just labels we attach to concepts that we find ourselves wanting to refer to. My claim is that there is no concept in allopatry that's worth naming. Have a look at Hey's und…
Trying to summarize a big comment into a small one here: I think it’s more of a deeper problem with language and reality more generally. To me it seems like species is a noun, like other nouns, but reality is ultimately a process. What is needed is a “verb-based” language for describing reality. A lot of “process philosophers” like Whitehead, Deleuze, etc. have argued similar things. So yeah I suppose I agree it’s ul…
Thanks, your noun/process suggestion is interesting. Perhaps that is indeed a good way of characterizing what happened in biology. It's clear that biology has stumbled into a linguistic/philosophical trap; if it were actually science they wouldn't have been "working on it" since Darwin! I'll try to find time to look at the philosophy you refer to.
Do you know of comparable "messes" like the one in biology that you suspect were caused by a lack of more process-based language?
Are there some human languages that are more process-based than English?
It makes me wonder whether what the LLMs have captured in their training data might be effective for looking over different languages to see if there are any interesting different ways of handling "species".
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, I've looked at that before, but I don't think I've ever read it properly. Are you sure it's not missing the simple answer? Give up the idea that the question of whether populations are "conspecific" should be assigned a meaning. Words are just labels we attach to concepts that we find ourselves wanting to refer to. My claim is that there is no concept in allopatry that's worth naming. Have a look at Hey's und…
Trying to summarize a big comment into a small one here: I think it’s more of a deeper problem with language and reality more generally. To me it seems like species is a noun, like other nouns, but reality is ultimately a process. What is needed is a “verb-based” language for describing reality. A lot of “process philosophers” like Whitehead, Deleuze, etc. have argued similar things. So yeah I suppose I agree it’s ul…
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Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A lot of people seem confused about what "new species of [insert terrestrial animal]" means in 2026. Are there comments here reflecting confusion? Species is a relatively straightforward term, especially in a relatively scientifically literate community. The researchers and authors of the article discuss surveying locals about the species. > They have a word for every modern species. Every modern species of oak gro…
You know what I meant. Every species of oak that grows there. Mexico and southern California are the epicenter of oak diversity. They can be incredibly variable in form and features due to hybridization and heterophylly
I don't mean to be a jerk; I didn't know what you meant:
A problem with writing like that - in loose exaggeration and hyperbole - is that the reader knows the literal meaning likely isn't intended (but sometimes is!) but they don't know what you do mean, and they don't know if you actually know or are just spouting BS (which happens on the Internet!). You're exaggerating something in your head but I don't know what's in your head. Imagine a 2-d (or 3-d) diagram of possible meanings: I have one data point; the point or region for the actual meaning could be anywhere else on the diagram.
It's nothing personal - I don't know you. All I have to go on is what's in the comment. From the reader's perpsective: Is there even such a group - maybe it's all an urban myth? Did such a thing actually happen? Did they identify one or two trees, or several, or actually a lot of them? Was it as you said or was, for example, some member of the group a botanist or amateur botanist who was studying these things - it fits too neatly the trope that the locals are primitive, but still outsmart the bookish, arrogant scientists. I don't know.
Add that to the part about the words species and discovery, and the comment seems mostly based on tropes about experts. Again, I don't know; I have nothing else to go on. Maybe exaggeration only works if the actual factual basis is already established.
Re: 'Likweli': A new monkey species discovered in the Congo Basin
#30I can't imagine anything worse that could happen to an animal than getting discovered by humans. Dear monkey, please run, and run far!