Of the monkeys in Africa, the colobines comprise 19% of the 16 genera and 30% of the 79 species. They occur all across tropical African from sea level to 3,400 m above sea level, and where temperatures range from -7°C to 41°C and mean annual rainfall ranges from 50 cm to 1,100 cm. Ninety-six percent of the 24 species of Africa’s colobines are threatened with extinction, whereas 68% of the subspecies are threatened with extinction. Six of the species are ‘Critically Endangered’, including one that is probably already extinct. The two primary proximate threats to colobines in Africa are forest loss and hunting by humans, while the ultimate threat is humans and their widespread over-exploitation of natural resources. This chapter reviews the biological traits that make Africa’s colobines especially susceptible to extinction through forest loss and hunting, the threats they face, and the impacts of those threats. Predictions are presented concerning which species of African colobine will be among the first extinctions and where Africa’s colobines are expected to persist for at least the coming 30 years. Finally, this chapter presents an overview of the main conservation actions that Africa’s colobines require and gives priorities for research that will support their conservation.

Compared to other primate groups, molecular genetic data for colobines are still limited and much of their phylogenetic relationships, particularly within genera, remain unknown. In recent years, however, more molecular genetic work has been done and revealed interesting and unexpected insights into colobine evolution. In this chapter, we review the current knowledge about colobine phylogeny and phylogeography, and present and discuss results from published and unpublished mitochondrial sequence data.

In this chapter, I give an overview of the taxonomic classification of living colobine monkeys, primate subfamily Colobinae. With ten genera, 78 species and 124 taxa (species and subspecies) currently recognized, colobines are one of the most diverse primate subfamilies. Here, I follow the taxonomy proposed by Mittermeier et al. and Rowe and Myers, and discuss taxonomic changes over the last 50 years. Although our knowledge on colobine diversity and evolution increased considerably in recent decades, the current taxonomic classification of colobines should be regarded as preliminary and further changes will be required when additional data on ecology, behaviour, morphology and genetics become available. However, besides the need of additional biological data we need also to agree on how to classify colobine diversity (i.e. which species concept is applied) in order to establish a refined and broadly acceptable colobine taxonomy.