Alouatta sara Elliot, 1910

3.3.4.7 Alouatta sara Elliot, 1910 View in CoL

Type: Adult female, skin and skill, No. 1907.8.2.1 British Museum (Natural History) ( Napier 1976).

Type locality: Province of Sara, Bolivia.

Common name: Bolivian red howler.

Distributed in Bolivia, this species occurs from the department of Pando south along the Andean Cordillera, and east into Bolivia, including the Río Beni basin and east as far as the Mamoré-Guaporé interfluvium ( Anderson 1997; Büntge and Pyritz 2007) ( Fig. 3.1 View Fig ).

Alouatta sara was initially considered a distinct species by Elliot (1910) and later regarded as a subspecies of A. seniculus by Cabrera (1957) and Hill (1962). Minezawa et al. (1985) conducted cytogenetic analyses based on a sample of 33 red howler monkeys from the region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, and concluded that their karyotype differed considerably from those of Colombian red howlers ( A. s. seniculus ), and therefore should be considered a different species. Similarly, comparative cytogenetic analyses by Stanyon et al. (1995) demonstrated karyotype differences between A. sara and A. arctoidea congruent with typical differences observed between species belonging to different genera. Groves (2001) considered sara to be a full species. Cortés-Ortiz et al. (2003) and Perelman et al. (2011) included mitochondrial and nuclear sequence data of A. sara individuals in their phylogenetic analyses, but only the former authors also included samples from A. seniculus from Colombia. Phylogenetic analyses based on mitochondrial DNA data show that A. sara and A. seniculus are sister taxa that diverged approximately 2.4 MA ( Cortés-Ortiz et al. 2003). Based on cytogenetic and molecular data, the recognition of A. sara as a full species is strongly supported. Nonetheless, further studies are needed to understand the actual borders of its geographic range, its relationships with other howler species, and the levels of genetic variation across the distribution of this taxon.