Lions in West-Africa

[BorneanTiger]

(08-31-2019, 10:30 PM)chui_ Wrote:

(08-29-2019, 09:51 PM)BorneanTiger Wrote: Not half of Africa, but half of sub-Saharan Africa. The Maghreb (Northwest Africa, where the Barbary lion would have been, and where the Barbary leopard might still be) and Northeast Africa (where the Nubian-cum-Egyptian lions would have been, and where the Southeast Egyptian leopard might still be, particularly in the protected area of Elba) are not included here.

Fair enough. 

Also, I seriously doubt the Barbary leopard is still around. They may have been up until a couple of decades ago but they received very little attention from the scientific community. The fact they were lumped with the rest of African leopards into a single subspecies definitely didn't help, since the rest of the subspecies was doing well. But I think it's highly unlikely that these leopards weren't distinct considering the vastness of the Sahara desert separating them from other populations. As I indicated in my last post, the idea of a single African leopard subspecies was probably a premature conclusion from limited data. 

Some photos of lions in Waza NP, Cameroon from an older document.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

The Atlas leopard (formerly Panthera pardus panthera) got lumped with other mainland African leopards, as well as the Zanzibar leopard (formerly Panthera pardus adersi, which is possibly extant) into a single African subspecies, Panthera pardus pardus, in the same way that the Barbary lion (Panthera leo leo) got lumped with the Asiatic lion (formerly Panthera leo persica), West African lion (formerly Panthera leo senegalensis), and (northern) Central African lion (formerly Panthera leo azandica / kamptzi / senegalensis) into a single Northern subspecies (Panthera leo leo), but that doesn't mean that there are no genetic differences between these lions. On the contrary, even if Western and (northern) Central African lions are more closely related to the Asiatic and Barbary lions than to Southern and South-Eastern Africans, they still have genetic differences, partly as shown in this thread: 

Barnett et al. (2006): 
   
   
   

Antunes et al. (2008): 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Bertola et al. (2017): 

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Barnett et al. (2018): 

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

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