Kéwel
| Kéwel | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Bovidae |
| Subfamily: | Bovinae |
| Genus: | Tragelaphus |
| Species: | T. scriptus |
| Binomial name | |
|
Tragelaphus scriptus (Pallas, 1766) |
|
The kéwel (Tragelaphus scriptus) is a small to medium-sized antelope widespread in west and central Africa. Formerly and alongside the imbabala it was generically known as the bushbuck, however, it has since been found to be a species in its own right, with a separate geographic distribution. Of all the other tragelaphine antelopes, the kéwel is most closely related to the nyala (Tragelaphus angasi).
The kéwel is distributed from Senegal and southern Mauritania across the Sahel, east to Ethiopia and Eritrea and south to Angola and the southern DRC. It is common across this broad geographic distribution and is found in wooded savannas, forest-savanna mosaics, penetrating into some of the rain forest zones of the southern Central African Republic, Gabon, DRC and the Congo, in montane forests of the Bamenda Highlands and Mt. Cameroon and in the semi-arid zones of the Ethiopian lowlands and Eritrea. It does not occur in the deep rain forests of the central Congo Basin.
The kéwel is in general smaller than other tragelaphines, with a mainly red or yellow-brown ground colour. It is conspicuously striped with several vertical and at least one horizontal stripe and there is little to no sexual dimorphism with respect to patterning and ground colouration. It has been referred to as the harnessed antelope or guib harnaché. The conspicuousness of its patterning tends to attenuate slightly in a west to east cline along the species range, being least striking in the decula population of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Seven other genetically-based population groupings exist, some do not correspond to previously described subspecies. The nominate scriptus population occurs in west Africa including Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, while two populations occur along the upper and lower Volta valley, respectively, one in the Niger Basin in Nigeria as far east as the Cross River, phaleratus south of the Bamenda Highlands through Cameroon, Gabon, Congo, DRC to northern Angola, bor from Lake Chad and the Schari across the CAR to the Nile, and lastly dodingae east of the Nile in lowland areas of southern Sudan and northern Uganda.
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