How do I go about proving that lemurs' diversity is due to adaptive radiation?

Question

i am writing a term paper on lemurs, and my thesis is that their high level of diversity is due to adaptive radiation. what examples can i use to prove this?

Answer 1

Try to find out how closely related they are to each other based on differences in the sequence of mitochondrial DNA.  If many of them are close to the same distance, then it indicates that a common ancestor likely radiated into several different species.  Fossil records of early lemurs and how they compare to African species would help as well.  I assume that lemurs first arrived after it split from Africa but it is possible that the Island had contact with the mainland but separated before monkeys evolved.  Knowing when the island separated might help the argument.

Answer 2

Adaptive radiation occurs when a single species diversifies and adapts to several ecological niches

"Darwin's finches" is considered to be the classic example. For the lemurs this began some165 (or 124) million years ago when Madagascar split off from Africa. The "DNA analysis of present-day lemurs suggests that lemurs’ original ancestor lived nearly 70 million years ago."

http://www.amnh.org/sciencebulletins/bio...

Based on a web search there appears to have been multiple studies on adaptive radiation among the lemurs. No doubt you'll find multiple examples in those studies.