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Abstract
The African colobines represent a neglected area of cercopithecid systematics. Resolving
the phylogenetic relationships and estimating divergence dates among the living forms
will provide insight into the evolution of this group and may shed light upon the
evolution of other African primates as well. This is the first molecular assessment
of the evolutionary relationships among the modern colobus monkeys, which are comprised
of the black-and-white, olive, and red colobus groups. Over 4,000 base pairs of mitochondrial
DNA were amplified and sequenced in over 40 colobus monkey individuals incorporating
representatives from all commonly recognized species. Gene trees were inferred using
maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference, and penalized likelihood was employed to
estimate mitochondrial divergence dates among the sampled taxa. The results are congruent
with some aspects of previous phylogenetic hypotheses based on morphology and vocalizations,
although the relationships among several West and Central African taxa differ to some
degree. The divergence date analysis suggests that the black-and-white, olive, and
red colobus had diverged from one another by the end of the Miocene, and that by the
Plio-Pleistocene many of the species lineages were already present. This demonstrates
that the initial extant colobus monkey diversification occurred much earlier than
previously thought and was likely part of the same adaptive radiation that produced
the diverse colobine taxa seen in the African Plio-Pleistocene fossil record. The
lack of early members from the modern lineages in fossiliferous deposits suggests
that they resided in part in the forests of Central and West Africa, which also currently
harbor the highest levels of colobus monkey diversity. These forests should not be
ignored in models of Plio-Pleistocene human and nonhuman primate evolution.