should rates of apparent morphological evolution have been markedly more rapid in one genus than in the other? The answer probably relates to the fact that Eulemur is primarily diurnal whereas Microcebus is strictly nocturnal.

For mammals, visual signals will be most efficiently transmitted and received by day, and other signals, such as acoustic or olfactory, will be required for nocturnal signaling. Thus, mate choice criteria will tend to mirror the signal transmission favored in a given environment (Endler, 1992). As discussed above, the species diversity within the genus Microcebus had been underestimated for many years, and, although we can now identify subtle patterns of coloration and morphometric variation as distinguishing among species, it is not a stretch to refer to them as a cryptic species radiation (sensu of Mayr, 1995). Although the various species contained within the diurnal genus Eulemur show a notable array of sexually dichromic pelage variation, with males in particular showing species-specific head ornamentation, mouse lemurs are uniformly drab, showing no sexual dichromatism. These patterns perfectly fit with the prediction that diurnal animals will emphasize visual cues for mate selection whereas nocturnal animals will emphasize olfactory and auditory signals (Jones, 1997).

This prediction as applied to mouse lemurs seems to be born out by studies demonstrating that olfactory and hormonal signals conveyed by means of urine exposure can have powerful effects on both behavior and on basic physiological and reproductive functions in these mammals. For example, exposure to female urine can significantly increase testosterone levels in males, just as exposure to the urine of dominant males can suppress testosterone production in other males (Perret and Schilling, 1995). Acoustic studies in particular have revealed subtleties in signaling, with two results noteworthy in their implications for potential mate-choice mechanisms. First, acoustic signals in mouse lemurs seem to evolve extremely rapidly, and second, the greatest levels of acoustic separation occur in the sexual advertisement calls of males. Relevant to the issue of rapid rates, studies of captive mouse lemur colonies in Europe reveal that colonies that have been separated for only a few generations have already begun to develop distinct dialects in their acoustic signals (Zimmermann and Hafen, 2001). Similarly, a detailed field study conducted in Madagascar revealed that the sexual advertisement calls of males occurring in demes separated by only 1.5 km or so showed distinct differences, even though there were no apparent biogeographic barriers separating the demes (Hafen et al., 1998). Moreover, when sexual advertisement calls were compared with predator advertisement calls in two species from widely separated habitats, it was found that, although there was a great deal of overlapping interspecific variation in the predator calls, the sexual