Central-West African lion
| West African lion | |
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| Male West African lion in Pendjari National Park, Benin. | |
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| West African lioness from Mefou National Park, Cameroon. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | Panthera leo |
| Subspecies: | P. l. senegalensis |
| Trinomial name | |
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Panthera leo senegalensis (Meyer, 1826) |
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| Lions now roam in just 1.1% of their historic range in West Africa. | |
The West African lion (Panthera leo senegalensis), also called Senegal lion, was considered a lion subspecies native to Central and Western Africa. Based on a genealogical analysis, IUCN Red List assessors provisionally subsumed lion populations in Central, Western and Northern Africa to P. l. leo.
Already in 2004, the population of lions in Western and Central Africa was small and fragmented. The regions were estimated to have comprised at most 1,800 individuals. The Senegal lion was therefore considered regionally endangered.
In 1826, Meyer gave the taxonomic name "Panthera leo senegalensis" to lions ranging from Senegal to Nigeria. In 1900, Matschie gave the trinomen "Panthera leo kamptzi" to lions in northern Cameroon and the region south of Lake Chad, before they were seen as belonging to the Senegalese subspecies.
Results of genetic research indicate that the Western and Central African lions form a different clade of lions, and are perhaps more closely related to Asiatic lions than to lions from Southern or Eastern Africa. Since West African lions are considered to be regionally endangered, their genetic distinctiveness is of particular interest.
In a comprehensive study about the evolution of lions, 357 samples of 11 lion populations were examined, including some hybrid lions. The hybrids were descended from Southern African lions (Panthera leo bleyenberghi or Panthera leo krugeri) captured in Angola and Zimbabwe, and apparently Central or West African lions. Results indicated that four "Atlas lions" from Morocco did not exhibit any unique genetic characteristics. The Moroccan cats shared mitochondrial haplotypes (H5 and H6) with Senegal lions, and together with them were part of a major mtDNA grouping (lineage III) that also included Asiatic samples. According to the authors, this scenario was in line with their theories on lion evolution. They conclude that lineage III developed in Eastern Africa, and then traveled north and west in the first wave of lion expansions out of the region some 118,000 years ago. It apparently broke up into haplotypes H5 and H6 within Africa, and then into H7 and H8 in Western Asia. Therefore, if subspecies of lions were reclassified according to close relationships, then the Senegal, Barbary and Asiatic subspecies would be grouped together as Panthera leo leo, but some taxonomic questions are not yet solved.
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Wikipedia