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Zootaxa 3507: 79–83 (2012)
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Article
ZOOTAXA
ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition)
urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:47AC4761-EF05-47C9-AC63-DA19246AFD25
A proposal for the common names for species of Chiropotes
(Pitheciinae: Primates)
ADRIAN. A. BARNETT1,2,16, LILIAM P. PINTO3,4, JÚLIO CÉSAR BICCA-MARQUES5,
STEPHEN F. FERRARI6, MARCELO GORDO7, PATRICIA G. GUEDES8, MARIA APARECIDA LOPES9,
JUAN C. OPAZO10, MARCIO PORT-CARVALHO11, RICARDO RODRIGUES DOS SANTOS12,
RAFAELA F. SOARES13, WILSON R. SPIRONELLO2, LIZA M. VEIGA13,
TATIANA MARTINS VIEIRA14 & SARAH A. BOYLE15
1
Centre for Research in Evolutionary and Environmental Anthropology, Roehampton University, London, England
Coordenação de Biodiversidade, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, Manaus, AM, Brazil
3
Curso de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, SP, Brazil
4
Centro Nacional de Pesquisa e Conservação da Biodiversidade Amazônica, Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade, Manaus, AM, Brazil
5
Faculdade de Biociências, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
6
Dept. Biologia, Universidade Federal de Sergipe, São Cristóvão, SE, Brazil
7
Dept. Biologia, Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, AM, Brazil
8
Dept. Mastozoologia, Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brasil
9
Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, PA, Brazil
10
Instituto de Ciencias Ambientales y Evolutivas, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Austral de Chile, Casilla 567, Valdivia, Chile
11
Instituto Florestal de São Paulo, Estação Experimental de Bauru, SP, Brazil
12
Centro de Ciências Agrárias e Ambientais, Universidade Federal de Maranhão, Chapadinha, MA, Brazil
13
Dept. Zoologia, Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, PA, Brazil
14
Programa de Pós Graduação em Zoologia do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, Belém, PA, Brazil
15
Dept. Biology, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
16
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
2
Abstract
The common English name for the genus Chiropotes is currently bearded saki. We propose the use of “cuxiú” as the common name for Chiropotes species, arguing that this term not only has deeper cultural and historical roots, but would mesh
with the common name currently in use over the vast majority of the genus range. Cuxiú (pronounced “coosh-e-oo”)
would be phylogenetically and taxonomically more appropriate, and less ambiguous, than the currently used term, and
remove the implied close affiliation between Pithecia and Chiropotes. Finally, as an indigenously-derived name, it would
fit with the common names in use for the other two genera in the sub-family Pitheciinae (uacari, Cacajao; saki, Pithecia),
both of which also have indigenous origins.
Key words: Bearded saki, Chiropotes, Cuxiú, Pithecidae
Pitheciin systematics
Together with Cacajao Lesson 1840 and Pithecia Desmarest 1804, the genus Chiropotes Lesson 1840 forms the
Pitheciinae, a sub-family of the Pithecidae (Groves 2005). In current English usage (e.g. IUCN 2011), monkeys of
the three genera are generally referred to as sakis (Pithecia), uacaris (Cacajao), and bearded sakis (Chiropotes).
The terms for the former two genera are derived from indigenous names for the monkeys (Barnett 2004), whereas
the latter is the English form of the equivalent name in German, “Bartsaki”, which was coined by Hick (1968).
Common names generally use salient visual characters both to distinguish between species (Barnett 2004), and
to provide a verbal grouping for visually similar animals (Yoon 2009; Atran & Medin 2010). Aside from the
Accepted by P. Gaubert: 31 Aug. 2012; published: 5 Oct. 2012
79
occasional divergence, such folk taxonomies generally approximate well to scientific taxonomy (e.g. Fleck et al.
1999). However, while the English common name for Chiropotes refers to a salient characteristic of the animal it
also implies a closer affinity between Chiropotes and Pithecia than between either of these genera and Cacajao. As
noted by Opazo et al. (2006), this implication is incorrect.
The superficial similarity between Chiropotes and Pithecia is restricted to the distinctive, long bushy tail,
which is notably lacking in Cacajao, the only platyrrhine where the tail is highly reduced (Figure 1). The term
“bearded” as a distinguishing factor is based on the fact that both adult male and female Chiropotes have
hypertrophied hair on the lower jaw, a feature absent in Pithecia. In Cacajao, a variable amount of facial hair is
also present. Although this never approaches the beard of Chiropotes, it does confound the use of the beard as a
diagnostic criterion for the informal distinction of the genus Chiropotes within the pitheciines.
We argue that correcting this error is important because, in a rare moment of phylogenetic unanimity, all recent
published studies of the topic consider Cacajao and Chiropotes to be sister taxa within the subfamily Pitheciinae.
Such studies have included morphological (Rosenberger 1981; Horovitz et al. 1998; Kay 1990; Marroig &
Cheverud 2004), molecular (Canavez et al. 1999; von Dornum & Ruvolo 1999; Opazo et al. 2006; Chatterjee et al.
2009; Wildman et al. 2009), cytogenetic (Moura-Pensin et al. 2001; Finotelo et al. 2010), and biochemical
(Schneider et al. 1995) analyses. According to Schneider (2000), Pithecia diverged from the pitheciin lineage some
3 million years before the separation of Chiropotes and Cacajao. It is important that the correct distinctions are
recognised, as there are strong behavioural and ecological differences among the three genera, including group
size, degree of specialization for seed predation, and even distribution patterns (i.e. allopatry between Cacajao and
Chiropotes) (Norconk 2001).
Pitheciin taxonomic history
Taxonomic unanimity has, however, taken time to establish: historically, the three genera were first assigned to the
long-abolished Simia (Cacajao and Chiropotes by Humboldt (1811), and Pithecia by Linnaeus (1766)), all were
subsequently transferred to Pithecia by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1812), a grouping then divided by Lesson (1840)
into Cacajao, Pithecia (Pithecia) and Pithecia (Chiropotes). The latter was first elevated to full generic status (as
Cheiropotes) by Reichenbach (1862), and then amended to Chiropotes by Gray (1870), although later publications,
such as the influential A Review of the Primates (Elliot 1913), still retained it as a sub-genus of Pithecia.
Consequently, the presence of “saki” as a shared element in the common names of Pithecia and Chiropotes appear
to be at least partly rooted in these historical groupings.
Common name use: cuxiú
In addition to being phylogenetically misleading, the common English name in current usage for the monkeys of
the genus Chiropotes is also both ungainly and inconsistent with the use of indigenous names for the other
pitheciine genera (Barnett 2004). There is, however, a common name for Chiropotes that pre-dates “bearded saki”,
and which does not suggest an erroneously close link with Pithecia. This name is “cuxiú”. When describing, as
Simia satanas, a specimen of Chiropotes satanas, Humboldt (1811) gave the common names as “couxio” and
“couchio du Grand Para”. In the same publication Humboldt (1811: 313) also introduced the term “chiropotes”,
formed from the Greek words “hand” and “drinker”, in the following manner ‘’J’ai nommé le Capucin Simia
, main, et
, buveur’’, referring specifically to the habit of drinking water by immersing the
chiropotes, de
hand in the liquid. While “hand-drinker” would be a transliteration of the genus name, it is now redundant as a
descriptor, given that this type of behaviour has now been observed in many other monkey species. The beard was
mentioned in the description of this specimen, but was not given any special significance. In Elliot (1913) both
Pithecia and Chiropotes were called sakis, with Chiropotes species having such common names of red-backed saki
and black saki. However, consistent with Humboldt’s naming, the type species of the modern genus Chiropotes
was named by Lesson (1840) as “Pithecia (Chiropotes) couxio”. Although “Chiropotes couxio” is unavailable
because of its synonymy with Chiropotes satanas (earlier described as “Cebus satanas” by Hoffmannseg 1807 [see
Groves 2005: 146]), the use of the word cuxiú in 1840 does highlight the antiquity of the association of this name
with the evolutionary lineage of pitheciins that Chiropotes represents.
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BARNETT ET AL.
FIGURE 1. A long bushy tail and no beard characterize (A) Pithecia, which is taxonomically less related to (B) short-tailed,
beardless Cacajao and (C) long bushy-tailed, bearded Chiropotes than these two genera are to each other, yet both Chiropotes
and Pithecia are currently called sakis. All three photos are courtesy of Luiz Claudio Marigo.
Additionally, the current common names for Cacajao and Pithecia (uacari and saki, respectively) are both
derived from indigenous names (Barnett 2004). By adopting the indigenous word cuxiú (pronounced: coosh-e-oo)
as the common name for the genus Chiropotes, we would be using a name employed throughout the Brazilian
Amazon that is well-established in the academic literature written in Portuguese (Ferreira 1792; Goeldi 1893;
Deane 1967; Ayres 1981; Arruda 1985; Veiga 2006; Pinto 2008) and that differs only orthographically from the use
of “couxio” or “couchio” in Humboldt (1811). Hence a similar rule would be being applied for naming all pitheciin
genera. “Cuxiú” derives from the Tupi-Guarani language group that includes the Nheengatu and Sateré-Mawé
tongues of the southern Amazon basin (da Silva 2006, 2007), where the name is “kusiu” or “kuSiwu”. As is
common with primates (Barnett 2004), the name is probably an onomatopoeic derivation of the animal’s alarm call.
While the geographic range of the genus Chiropotes includes the Guianas and southern Venezuela, where
alternative names are given to these monkeys (saki nez blanc, saki noire: [French Guiana]; baard-aap, bisa,
kwataswagi, satan-aap [Suriname]; jacket-monkey, johnny-soldier [Guyana]; saki nariblanco, capuchinos del
Orinoco, mono barbudo [Venezuela]: (Emmons & Feer 1997, IUCN 2011)), three of the four recognized species
(Silva & Figueiredo 2002, IUCN 2011) are endemic to Brazil, and more than half the geographic range of the
fourth species—Chiropotes chiropotes—is located within Brazilian territory. In other words, 80–90% of
Chiropotes populations are located on the part of the globe where, both in Portuguese and in tribal languages, these
monkeys are universally referred to as cuxiús. There is precedent for this kind of change in common name, for
example, in the shift from Brachyteles arachnoides being referred to as “woolly spider monkey” (e.g. Wolfheim
1983) to the indigenous term “muriqui” (Strier 1992).
In line with this, we propose the following common names for the Chiropotes taxa recognized by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN 2011): Chiropotes albinasus (Geoffroy and Deville
1848), red-nosed cuxiú; Chiropotes chiropotes (Humboldt 1811), brown-backed cuxiú; Chiropotes satanas
(Hoffmannsegg 1807), black cuxiú; and Chiropotes utahickae (Hershkovitz 1985), Uta Hick’s cuxiú.
COMMON NAMES FOR CHIROPOTES SPECIES
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Silva Jr. & Figueiredo (2002) proposed the name Chiropotes sagulatus (Traill 1821) to those Chiropotes
populations east of the Rio Branco and north of the Amazon (map available in Veiga 2006). Although this opinion
has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed form (the 2002 publication is a congress abstract), the Latin name has
been used in a book chapter by Gordo et al. (2008), and for a PhD thesis by Gregory (2011). If this taxon becomes
generally accepted, we suggest the common name be red-backed cuxiú.
Conclusions
Given all these considerations, we propose the use of the term “cuxiú”, rather than “bearded saki”, as the common
English name for the monkeys of the genus Chiropotes. This would (a) provide consistency with the local common
name used throughout most of the geographic range of the genus, (b) better reflect the cultural and historic use of
this term, (c) standardise the informal nomenclature of the subfamily Pitheciinae (all indigenous names), and (d)
eliminate the misleading informal affiliation of the genus with Pithecia.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Marilyn Norconk (Kent State University) for comments and ideas, and Luiz Claudio Marigo for
permission to use his photos in Figure 1.
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