Avahi laniger
(Gmelin, 1788) · speciesAt a glance
Sources12 archives
Databases and archives Avahi laniger's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation15 languages↗
Animal Diversity WebUniv. of Michigan MZspecies account↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility285 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI3 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics13 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
GoaTGenomes on a Tree · Sangergenome & karyotype↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
Paleobiology DatabasePBDB consortiumfossil record↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
The eastern woolly lemur (Avahi laniger), also known as the eastern avahi or Gmelin's woolly lemur, is a species of woolly lemur native to eastern Madagascar, where it lives in the wet tropical rainforest at low elevations along the eastern coast of the island or they can also inhabit the northern tip of the island with other species. The woolly lemur name refers to their thick, tightly curled hair, whereas their generic name avahi refers to their high-pitched defensive call. The eastern woolly lemur almost has an owl-look with its large eyes, small rounded head, and ears that are mostly hidden."Eastern Woolly Lemur Photos and Facts." Arkive. Wildscreen Arkive, n.d. Web. 02 May 2017. <http://www.arkive.org/eastern-woolly-lemur/avahi-laniger/ {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170605120001/http://www.arkive.org/eastern-woolly-lemur/avahi-laniger/ |date=2017-06-05 }}>. This nocturnal animal weighs 1.0–1.3 kg and reaches a length of 27–29 cm with a tail of 33–37 cm. Its diet consists mainly of leaves and buds with fruits, flowers, and bark. Eastern woolly lemurs live in monogamous pairs together with their offspring. The eastern woolly lemur's breeding season ranges from March to May with the baby lemurs being born around August to September.Ehler, Pam. "Avahi Laniger (avahi)." Animal Diversity Web. N.p., 2002. Web. 02 May 2017. <http://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Avahi_laniger/>. Other lemur species that live in the same rainforests as eastern woolly lemur are the diademed sifaka (Propithecus diadema) and the red-bellied lemur (Eulemur rubriventer). In southeastern rainforests, sympatric lemur species of A. meridionalis are the brown mouse lemur (Microcebus rufus), the greater dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus major), the fat-tailed dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus medius) and the collared brown lemur (Eulemur collaris) in Sainte Luce Forest, and the southern lesser bamboo lemur (Hapalemur meridionalis) in Mandena Forest. According to the study conducted in "Diet and Behaviour of a Nocturnal Lemur, Avahi Laniger, in the Wild" (1991), a male lemur rarely interacts with more than one other individual when sleeping, traveling or grooming. At night, he would spend about 40% of the time with his partner either grooming or resting. As of right now, the Eastern Woolly Lemurs still continue to exist; however, based on another study conducted in "Distribution and Geographic Variation in the Western Woolly Lemur" (YEAR), it is revealed that the entire Lemur population might be endangered if the forests continues to "disappear at a disastrous rate". This could be due to many reasons, for example deforestation and forest degradation.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology3
Life cycle & reproduction6
Diet & foraging4
Habitat & environment2
Physiology & chemistry2
Other traits5
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Avahi laniger has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
The complete instruction manual Avahi laniger carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Avahi laniger. Above itBeside it, each dot is one dated fossil find — few enough to count, so they are drawn individually rather than as a graph. The orange marker is the DNA clock: DNA accumulates mutations at a roughly steady rate, so comparing this species' DNA with its relatives estimates when the lineage split off — independently of any fossil. Where the DNA reaches further back than the oldest fossil, the gap is hatched: the ghost lineage. It means the lineage was already out there, but has left us nothing we have dug up yet.
How it livedPBDB
Record type286 records
Origin
Range
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions5 of 5 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| South Kensington, GB | 17 |
| Stockholm, SE | 11 |
| Cambridge, US | 8 |
| Geneva, CH | 3 |
| Chicago, US | 1 |
Where the DNA of Avahi laniger was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.