Asiatic Lion - Data, Pictures & Videos

[BorneanTiger]

(06-10-2019, 03:34 AM)jordi6927 Wrote: Maybe this has already been discussed in this thread but I was wondering if there were any lions in Africa that were genetically very similar? And if it has been discussed within India about introducing other lion DNA to make the Asiatic stock stronger? Also ... are there any plans to move some of the lions to other parks to prevent overcrowding? thank you

From the works of Barnett et al. (https://web.archive.org/web/200708081825...0lions.pdf, https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...017-1039-2), it appears that the closest African relative of the Asiatic lion is the Barbary lion of North Africa, which would make sense because it was this lion's range that was the closest to that of the Asiatic lion (which used to be in the Arabian Peninsula (https://archive.org/stream/naturalistsli...8/mode/2up, https://archive.org/stream/journalofbomb...2/mode/2up, https://books.google.com/books?id=TX7BmP...&q&f=false, https://books.google.com/books?id=GWslAA...on&f=false), connected to North Africa via the Sinai Peninsula): 
       

Otherwise, generally, the closest relatives of the Asiatic lions are the North and West African lions, and some lions in northern Central Africa and Northeast Africa (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3080..._evolution):

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

which is why the Cat Specialist Group (Pages 71−73: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y) recognised lions in Asia and North, West and Central Africa as belonging to the subspecies Panthera leo leo, which I refer to as the "Northern lion group" or "Northern lion subspecies" for simplicity, but as mentioned here (https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-north-e...ican-lions), a thing to beware of is that a number of Central African lions, as shown by the work of Bertola et al. (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep3080..._evolution) and Barnett et al. (https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...017-1039-2), are more closely related to Southern African lions (Panthera leo melanochaita as per the Cat Specialist Group) than to the Northern lion group, so not all Central African lions are of the Northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo), with a number of them apparently belonging to the Southern subspecies (Panthera leo melanochaita), and it seems that the 2 subspecies overlap in northern parts of East Africa, including Ethiopia, which is why the CSG put a question mark over this area in their map of lion subspecies in page 72: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y

*This image is copyright of its original author

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