Abstract
Lion fecal DNA extracts from four individuals each from Yankari Game Reserve and Kainji-Lake National Park (central northeast and west Nigeria, respectively) were Sanger-sequenced for the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene. The sequences were aligned against 61 lion reference sequences from other parts of Africa and India. The sequence data were analyzed further for the construction of phylogenetic trees using the maximum-likelihood approach to depict phylogenetic patterns of distribution among sequences. Our results show that Nigerian lions grouped together with lions from West and Central Africa. At the smaller geographical scale, lions from Kainji-Lake National Park in western Nigeria grouped with lions from Benin (located west of Nigeria), whereas lions from Yankari Game Reserve in central northeastern Nigeria grouped with the lion populations in Cameroon (located east of Nigeria). The finding that the two remaining lion populations in Nigeria have different phylogenetic origins is an important aspect to consider in future decisions regarding management and conservation of rapidly shrinking lion populations in West Africa.
Highlights
There have been recent reports about a rapid reduction in population size and range distribution of lions (Estes et al 2011; Packer et al 2013)
The cytochrome b phylogenetic analysis showed that the Nigerian lions cluster with 96% bootstrap support within the clade including lions from West and Central Africa and India (Fig. 2)
The two Nigerian populations were phylogenetically separated: lions from Kainji-Lake National Park in western Nigeria grouped with lions in Benin, whereas the population in Yankari Game Reserve in central northeastern Nigeria grouped with lions from Cameroon and a few other countries (92% bootstrap; Fig. 2)
Summary
There have been recent reports about a rapid reduction in population size and range distribution of lions (Estes et al 2011; Packer et al 2013). Until the end of the last glaciation period, lions were broadly distributed and roamed most parts of southern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North America, northern part of South America, and sub-Saharan Africa (Coheleach 1982; Turner and Anton 1997; Bauer and Vander Merwe 2004; Werdelin and Lewis 2005) They were believed to have had the widest geographical distributions of any large terrestrial mammal in the late Pleistocene (Guthrie 1990; Kitchener 1991; Nowell and Jackson 1996; Sunquist and Sunquist 2002; Patterson 2004; Barnett et al 2009) before their disappearance as part of the end-Pleistocene megafaunal mass extinction (Martin and Steadman 1999). The range collapse of lions in historical times has resulted in the extirpation of many marginal fragmented populations (O’Brien et al 1987; Kingdon 1997)
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