North-East / Central / Equatorial African lions

[BorneanTiger]

(01-24-2019, 06:38 PM)Sanju Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:35 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote:

(01-24-2019, 06:13 PM)Sanju Wrote: Panthera leo leo Population is known or referred as "Northern Lion". My suggestion is to alter this thread name to that. IMO @BorneanTiger  

Actually, a problem that I've highlighted earlier is that Southern lions (Panthera leo melanochaita) are also present in North-East or Central Africa, and that's why we have this thread, to make it clear that there are issues with the Cat Specialist Group's classification of lions in Central Africa as Panthera leo leo and those in East Africa (which includes Ethiopia) as Panthera leo melanochaita, and that's why there's a question mark on the map of lion subspecies in Page 72: https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y

*This image is copyright of its original author

Yes, there is a considerable hybridization b/w melonochaita and leo in that zone.

It's not necessarily the case that they found mixed up lions (Panthera leo leo × Panthera leo melanochaita), it's to do with where geneticists found Northern (P. l. leo) and Southern lions (P. l. melanochaita) in Ethiopia or Northeast Africa. Firstly, let's start with the genetic study that made the captive Ethiopian lions at Addis Abeba Zoo famous, that of Bruche et al. Ethiopia is in East Africa, so it was expected that these lions would be closely related to wild East African lions in Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti ecosystem. However, the Addis Abeba lions (Haplotype 6) were found to be genetically distinct from other East African lions (including those at Ngorongoro and Serengeti, and Haplotypes 8 and 10, which included lions in Uganda, Somalia and Tsave East National Park in Kenya) besides the Asiatic (Haplotypes 1 and 2) and Southern African lions (Haplotypes 10–15, including those at Kruger National Park in South Africa, and Etosha National Park in Namibia), and captive Yemeni lions at Sana'a Zoo (which were thought to be of Ethiopian origin, Haplotype 9), and genetically close to wild Central African lions (Haplotypes 4 and 5) in Chad (particularly in Zakouma National Park) and Cameroon (particularly Bénoué and Waza National Parks), among others (including apparently those impure Barbary lions at Rabat Zoo which have Central, Western or Northeast African descent), despite being termed "genetically unique". The Addis Ababa lions also showed little signs of inbreeding compared to wild populations: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10344-012-0668-5
   
   
   
   
   
 
This image of an Addis Ababa lion is in the article by Bruche et al.: https://grist.org/article/a-new-species-of-lion-has-been-discovered-in-an-ethiopian-zoo/

*This image is copyright of its original author

Now take the case of wild lions in the national parks of Nechisar and Bale Mountains in southern Ethiopia. Nechisar is closer to the Central African country of South Sudan, where the Northern subspecies (P. l. leo) is supposed to be present, and Bale is closer to the East African country of Kenya, where the Southern subspecies (P. l. melanochaita) is supposed to be present: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nechisar+National+Park+HQ/@6.4277328,38.0536487,6z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x17babc96ec793a1b:0x35422b2c5ef1ddab!8m2!3d6.0259866!4d37.5679153
   
   

However, scat samples of lions in Nechisar (Numbers 52 and 53) were found to cluster with East African samples from Kenya and Somali in a single Haplotype (13), part of what Bertola et al. referred to as the "North-east clade" of the Southern lion group, whereas a scat sample from a lion in Bale (Number 54) was found to cluster with Central African samples from Chad, D. R. Congo, Sudan and the Central African Republic in another Haplotype (9), in what Bertola et al. referred to as the "Central clade" of the Northern lion group: https://media.nature.com/original/nature-assets/srep/2016/160804/srep30807/extref/srep30807-s1.pdf

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

To put it simply, even though Nechisar is geographically closer to the Northern subspecies' territory in Central Africa, lions in Nechisar are apparently Southern lions, and even though Bale is closer to the Southern subspecies' territory in East Africa, Bale lions are apparently Northern lions, which is why the maps provided be Bertola et al. and the Cat Specialist Group depict Ethiopia as where the ranges of the Northern and Southern subspecies overlap: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4973251/, https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/32616/A_revised_Felidae_Taxonomy_CatNews.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y#page=71

*This image is copyright of its original author

That famous lion in Bale Mountains National Park, apparently of the Northern subspecies (P. l. leo): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/02/black-mane-ethiopian-lions-video-endangered-species/

*This image is copyright of its original author

 
Lion in Nechisar National Park, apparently of the Southern subspecies (P. l. melanochaita): 

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