BODY SIZE AND MASS OF NGORONGORO CRATER LIONS

[Pckts]

"Morphologically, the crater lions appear more similar to the Serengeti Lions, males in both populations have fuller manes than the Manyara males and both sexes have shorter faces. The morphological characteristics of the Manyara lions are more similar to the lions from the east of the Rift valley.
Although our sample size from the Manyara is very small, genetic data also suggest a greater affinity between the Crater and Serengeti populations. First, the allesl frequencies for two blood enzyme loci in Manyara are very different from either the Crater or Serengeti. All five Manyara lions were homozygous for the TF b allele and the four animals that could be tested for ADA carried the b allele at a frequency of .625
Note however that all five Manyara animals are from a single pride. Second, DNA fingerprinting analysis indicates greater genetic distance between the Crater and Manyara. Within each population, there is a strong positive relationship of kinship of any two individuals and their extent of variable number of tandem repeat (VNTR) "band-sharing"
Band-sharing between any two individuals is the total number of DNA fragments  showing similar molecular weight and intensisty carried by both individuals. On average, any two members of the Serengeti population that are unrelated to each other share 49% of their VNTR bands and most distantly related members of the Ngorongoro population share 47%
Six lions from four different prides in the Ngorongoro Crater were compared with five animals from fiveprides in the Serengeti and two animals from one Manyara lions.
Although the genetic, morphological, and demographic data clearly limite, they all consistently indicate that the Crater population is more closely allied to the Serengeti lions, and that immigrants entering the Crater after the Stomoxys' plague were also from the Serengeti."
PACKER-
http://www.cbs.umn.edu/sites/default/fil...ongoro.pdf
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