Abstract:
Among continental Africa’s endemic primates, the bushbabies or galagos (family
Galagidae, or Galonigidae, Groves, 2001) have been described as the most successful
radiation of strepsirrhine primates in terms of species diversity and geographic
range (Fleagle, 2013; Nekaris & Bearder, 2011). Currently, more than two dozen
species have been named across six genera (Penna & Pozzi, 2024). All members
of this clade are nocturnal (Bearder, 1999), in contrast to the lemurs of Madagascar
(which include nocturnal, diurnal, and cathemeral species; LaFleur et al., 2014)
and the haplorrhine primates, with two nocturnal taxa (Southeast Asia’s tarsiers, and
South America’s owl monkeys; Fleagle, 2013). Along with the lorisids and Malagasy
lemurs, the strepsirrhine primates (previously the prosimian primates, minus
Southeast Asia’s tarsiers) have been described, and long viewed, as the “poor sister
group” of the primates (Martin, 1993:192). This can be seen in the contrasting large
number of publications on the anthropoid (i.e., haplorrhine [monkeys and apes plus
the tarsiers]) primates, especially the great apes and baboons (Sauther et al., 2015).
What follows is an introduction to a special issue on the galagos/bushbabies. This
introduction puts the special issue into context, by providing a short history of the
study of this group, a summary of their evolution and divergence from other primate clades, comments on their conservation status, and brief synopses of the papers
included in this volume.
