Common Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagothricha)
The common woolly monkey, brown woolly monkey, or Humboldt's woolly monkey (Lagothrix lagothricha) is a woolly monkey from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela. It lives in groups of two to 70 individuals, usually splitting the group into smaller subgroups when active.
The taxonomy of the common woolly monkey is still debated. Fooden classified it is as one of two species under the genus Lagothrix with four sub-species (L. l. lagotricha, L. l. lugens, L. l. cana, and L. l. poeppgigii. Later, an analysis of craniodental morphology suggested a move of all sub-species to the species level and also led to the yellow-tailed woolly monkey (formerly Lagothrix flavicauda) being moved to a monotypic genus Oreonax. Genetic analyses also identify distinct groups, but different groupings from morphological and molecular data continue to make this a difficult issue that might be addressed with larger data sets.[6] A 2014 study found the genus Lagothrix to comprise only two species: L. lagothrica and L. flavicauda, with L. lagothrica containing five subspecies; the results of this study have been followed by the American Society of Mammalogists and the IUCN Red List.
Many published sources use the specific name lagothricha rather than the etymologically correct lagotricha, since Fooden adopted this spelling when he revised the genus.[4] Von Humboldt used both spellings in his original description of the species.
These five subspecies are known:
Gray woolly monkey, L. l. cana
Brown woolly monkey, L. l. lagothrica (type subspecies)
Colombian woolly monkey, L. l. lugens
Silvery woolly monkey, L. l. poeppigii
Peruvian woolly monkey, L. l. tschudii
Gray Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagothrica cana) Northern Pantana - Matto Grosso (Subspecies needs verification)
Poeppig’s Woolly Monkey (Lagothrix lagothrica poeppigii) Peruvian Andes - mid-elevation
