Panthera leo senegalensis
| West African lion | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Male lion in Pendjari National Park, Benin. | |
 |
|
| Lioness from Mefou National Park, Cameroon. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Feliformia |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Genus: | Panthera |
| Species: | P. leo |
| Subspecies: | P. l. leo |
| Trinomial name | |
|
Panthera leo leo (Linnaeus, 1758) |
|
 |
|
| Lions now roam in just 1.1% of their historic range in West Africa. | |
| Synonyms | |
|
Formerly: |
|
Formerly:
The West African lion (Panthera leo leo) is a lion population in West Africa that is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. This population is isolated and comprises fewer than 250 mature individuals. Already in 2004, the lion population in West and Central Africa was fragmented and estimated as comprising at most 1,800 individuals.
In the 20th century, it was also referred to as the Senegal lion. It was formerly considered a lion subspecies under the name P. leo senegalensis. In 2017, the lion populations in North, West and Central Africa and Asia were subsumed under P. l. leo.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, several lion type specimens from West African countries formed the basis for descriptions of putative subspecies:
Later they were considered synonymous with Panthera leo senegalensis.
In a comprehensive study about the evolution of lions, 357 samples of 11 lion populations were examined, including some hybrid lions. The hybrids had descended from lions captured in Angola and Zimbabwe, and apparently West or Central Africa. Results indicated that four lions from Morocco did not exhibit any unique genetic characteristics and shared mitochondrial haplotypes H5 and H6 with lions from West Africa, and together with them were part of a major mtDNA grouping (lineage III) that also included Asiatic samples. This scenario was well in line with theories on lion evolution: lineage III developed in East Africa and traveled north and west in the first wave of lion expansions about 118,000 years ago. It apparently broke up into haplotypes H5 and H6 within Africa, and then into H7 and H8 in West Asia.
...
Wikipedia