Molecular evolution of primates - featuring mobile elements

Abstract

The order Primates is one of the most diverse mammalian orders. With the exception of the genus Homo, primates are mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia and Central and South America. The order was first recognized in the 18 th century by Linnaeus and was divided into four different groups with 35 species. Today, the number of species varies from 230 (Rowe, 1996) to more than 350 (Groves, 2001;Geissmann, 2003) and is solely exceeded in number by Rodentia and Chiroptera. However, the identification of new species is still in progress. In the last few years, several new subspecies, species and even genera were described (