World Lion Day (and s'mores)

Today is World Lion Day (RAWR) so to celebrate I am going to share with you a paper recently published by a close colleague of mine, Dr. Laura Bertola, and company. Laura completed her PhD at Universiteit Leiden (that’s in the Netherlands) last year on genetic diversity of the lion focusing on phylogenetic patterns and how populations in West and Central Africa fall in comparison to the rest of the population. 
​

​In their recent publication, they “challenge current lion taxonomy” emphasizing the need for rethinking the way we view the species on the population level. To challenge taxonomy means they question how the species is classified or labeled. For the lion, currently there are two officially recognized subspecies (internationally or nationally).

Panthera leo leo and Panthera leo persica (CITES/IUCN: International)
or
Panthera leo melanochaita and Panthera leo leo (USFWS/ESA: National)
*For the purposes of their study, we’ll be focusing on the international CITES classification. 

Laura and her colleagues argue there should be more.
​

​Based on their phylogeny (the pretty tree looking thing on the right), there is a definite North Group and South Group (similar to the findings in my study). Within each of these groups, they were able to identify regions which could narrows lions down further into 6 populations. So, very basically, they’re saying from these findings they can put a lion into 1 of 6 groups based on these genetic markers.
​

The innovative part of this analysis was the addition of a comparison to other species who are recognized to have subspecies and show similar Sub-Saharan population distribution. The study identified 46 animals that show a distinction between West/Central African and East/Southern Africa populations. While some animals are recognized as being more than one species – known as a complex – such as Baboon (5), Rock hyrax (5) and Oryx (3), others are species separated into subspecies, such as Giraffe (9; below), Black (4) and White (2) Rhino, and Caracal (8). Only 13 of the 46 animals aren’t separated between West/Central and East/Southern, including the lion, according to CITES.

​The ESA classification is a little closer to demonstrating the Sub-Saharan distribution taxonomically by clumping the West/Central population with the Asiatic population. However, based on these results, lions may be able to be classified even more specifically. Hopefully my research will be able to shed a little more light on this. The help Laura is giving me to continue this investigation is immeasurable.

---

In case you forgot, today is also National S'more Day and I just bought this....

from San Diego based online marshmallow shop Mallow Mallow.