Speciation without a good reason: disentangling the radiation of primates living in limestone habitat

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Speciation represents one of the key processes in evolution, resulting in different trajectories of evolutionary lineages, thereby creating distinct adaptations, phenotypes and physiologies and ultimately resulting in the biodiversity of the countless and amazing species as we know it. Yet, although the factors playing a role in speciation are generally known, in most cases of species radiations, the drivers behind their differentiation process have remained elusive. Fortunately, in recent years, the genomic revolution has provided researchers with new tools that make both population genomic and detailed molecular-ecological studies possible, allowing to dissect the evolutionary history and ecology of species in unprecedented detail. We will use these genomic technologies in order to investigate the radiation of a unique and highly endangered group of Old World monkeys, the limestone langurs (Trachypithecus francoisi species group) of East and Southeast Asia. We will sequence complete genomes for several individuals from each of the seven limestone langur species as well as from several outgroup species and use these data to investigate both the demographic and adaptive evolutionary history of the species. In addition, we will study both the plant diet and gut microbial flora of each three species of limestone and rainforest langurs to reveal ecological differences in as much detail as possible with current techniques. We will combine these data with known data on ecology and behavior of these species as well as palaeo-environmental and -climatic data from the region they occur and thereby disentangle both their evolutionary history and the causes behind their radiation.