Abstract
The African lion (Panthera leo), listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Appendix II of CITES), is mainly impacted by indiscriminate killing and prey base depletion. Additionally, habitat loss by land degradation and conversion has led to the isolation of some subpopulations, potentially decreasing gene flow and increasing inbreeding depression risks. Genetic drift resulting from weakened connectivity between strongholds can affect the genetic health of the species. In the present study, we investigated the evolutionary history of the species at different spatiotemporal scales. Therefore, the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (N = 128), 11 microsatellites (N = 103) and 9,103 SNPs (N = 66) were investigated in the present study, including a large sampling from Tanzania, which hosts the largest lion population among all African lion range countries. Our results add support that the species is structured into two lineages at the continental scale (West-Central vs East-Southern), underlining the importance of reviewing the taxonomic status of the African lion. Moreover, SNPs led to the identification of three lion clusters in Tanzania, whose geographical distributions are in the northern, southern and western regions. Furthermore, Tanzanian lion populations were shown to display good levels of genetic diversity with limited signs of inbreeding. However, their population sizes seem to have gradually decreased in recent decades. The highlighted Tanzanian African lion population genetic differentiation appears to have resulted from the combined effects of anthropogenic pressure and environmental/climatic factors, as further discussed.
Highlights
The African continent still hosts a uniquely diversified megafaunal community [1]
Our collection of samples from West-Central Africa and Tanzania was compiled by the Wildlife Division of Tanzania and the IGF Foundation under the auspices of the Francois Sommer Foundation (Fondation Internationale pour la Gestion de la Faune, France), and was supplemented with three samples from a breeding farm from South Africa provided by Mario Melletti who had the required permits from the relevant national authorities
We examined the decrease in genetic similarity over distance to assess the fine-scale genetic structure in Tanzania through a spatial autocorrelation analysis in GenAlEx v6.502 [58]
Summary
The African continent still hosts a uniquely diversified megafaunal community [1]. This megafaunal diversity exceeds that of any other biogeographic region in the world [2]. This North/South dichotomy documented in other savanna mammals is believed to reflect common evolutionary responses to environmental changes mainly driven by major climatic oscillations that have occurred over the last 300,000 years [2]. The population decline is, unequal within the lion distribution range [10,11,12,13]. The latest census in a sample of protected areas concluded a possible decrease of 62% between 1993 and 2014 within the West, Central and East African regions, while the Southern populations appeared to be more stable [14]. The long-term survival of lion populations in West and Central Africa is severely threatened with many more recent local extinctions noted, even within protected areas [13,15]. Following the IUCN Red List report, the species would currently only persist in a range of 1.65 million km, which represents 8% of its ancestral distribution range [10,13,14,16]
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