IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library
   

 

View printer friendly
Dures, S.G.; Carbone, C.; Loveridge, A.J.; Maude, G.; Midlane, N.; Aschenborn, O.; Gottelli, D.
A century of decline: Loss of genetic diversity in a southern African lion-conservation stronghold
2019  Diversity and Distributions (25): 1-26

There is a dearth of evidence that determines the genetic diversity of populations contained within present-day protected areas compared with their historic state prior to large-scale species declines, making inferences about a species' conservation genetic status difficult to assess. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the use of historic specimens to assess the change in genetic diversity over a defined spatial area. Like other species, African lion populations (_Panthera leo_) are undergoing dramatic contractions in range and declines in numbers, motivating the identification of a number of lion conservation strongholds across East and southern Africa. We focus on one such stronghold, the Kavango-Zambezi transfrontier conservation area (KAZA) of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We compare genetic diversity between historical museum specimens, collected during the late 19th and early 20th century, with samples from the modern extant population. We use 16 microsatellite markers and sequence 337 base pairs of the hypervariable control region (HVR1) of the mitochondrial genome. We use bootstrap resampling to allow for comparisons between the historic and modern data. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. We show that the genetic diversity of the modern population was reduced by 12% to 17%, with a reduction in allelic diversity of approximately 15%, compared to historic populations, in addition to having lost a number of mitochondrial haplotypes. We also identify reduced allelic diversity and a number of 'ghost alleles' in the historical samples no longer present in the extant population. We argue a rapid decline in allelic richness after 1895 suggests the erosion of genetic diversity coincides with the rise of a European colonial presence and the outbreak of rinderpest in the region. Our results support the need to improved connectivity between protected areas in order to prevent further loss of genetic diversity in the region.

PDF files are only accessible to Friends of the Cat Group. Joining Friends of the Cat Group gives you unlimited access and downloads in the Cat SG Library for one year, and allows you to receive our newsletter Cat News (2 regular issues per year plus special issues). More information how to join here

 

(c) IUCN/SSC Cat Specialist Group ( IUCN - The World Conservation Union)