Talk:West African lion

Location of Cameroon

Range map of the commonly accepted subspecies of the lion (Panthera leo) in the second half of the 20th century (P. l. azandica and P. l. nubica are not seperately distinguished because the type specimen of azandicus (northeastern Congo-Kinshasa) does not fit into the subspecies range in the map by Haas et al. (2005)).

Leo1pard (talk) 05:39, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Cameroon is in both Western and Central Africa.

Geopolitical divisions are artificial and the lions don't care. A lot of the African countries are members of multiple overlapping regional blocks, although Cameroon is in ECCAS and not ECOWAS. This lion map illustrates why the using the geopolitical blocks for these lion articles can be misleading. The lions in the south of Congo are clearly southwestern lions as the tropical forest is a barrier for lions and the reason for the primary division between the two lion subspecies. The map is not so helpful for Cameroon, although Cameroon lions seems more likely to be Central African lions, as there are very few lions in Nigeria and there cannot be much mixing. That pocket of lions in mid-eastern Congo could be central african lions or eastern lions (closer to those in Tanzania?). However, the distribution does make it look like the Uganda lions are more likely to be Central African lions, along with those of NE Congo.   Jts1882 | talk  15:30, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Re political borders : fully agree that cats don't care about them!! Using geopolitical blocks cannot only be but are misleading. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 18:27, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Re lions in Uganda and Central Africa: More specifically, that Ugandan lions in Eastern Africa are contiguous with lions in South Sudan (which is regarded as being in Central, Eastern and Northeastern Africa), which are contiguous with Kenyan lions in Eastern Africa, and Ethiopian lions in Eastern and Northeastern Africa. And that is why the Cat Specialist Group should have been more careful about subsuming lions in Central Africa to P. l. leo, and those in Eastern Africa to P. l. melanochaita, it is not like the different clades of African lions care about being confined to specific regions, judging from their tendency to migrate here and there, if they are able to do so. Leo1pard (talk) 05:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Basically, we are having more evidence that we should not treat this document that seriously, regarding African lions at least. It might work for certain populations of lions in Africa, but not all.

Leo1pard (talk) 07:14, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

The IUCN has a page on west African lions. I hadn't read it before, although it is cited first in the article. The taxonomy section has a nice summary of work up to when it was written (2015), notably on the relationship of Cameroon lions with others.

The prior assessment of the West African subpopulation used political boundaries to delineate its extent, incorporating populations from Senegal in the West to Nigeria in the East. Recent molecular analyses established that Lions in a relict population in central Nigeria (in Yankari Game Reserve) are closely related to Lions in Cameroon (Central Africa), while Lions from a population in western Nigeria (in Kainji Lake National Park (NP)), situated west of the lower Niger River, genetically cluster with Lions from Benin and Senegal, and are genetically distinct from Lions in Central Africa (Bertola et al. unpublished). These findings suggests that the lower Niger River acts as a barrier to Lion dispersal, separating Lions in West Africa (west of the lower Niger River), from Lions in central/eastern Nigeria and those of Central Africa. The current assessment therefore defines all populations west of the lower Niger River as belonging to the isolated West African subpopulation, which is justifiable in terms of Lion biology.

According to this the dividing line between Western and Central African lions is the Niger river in Nigeria, which firmly places the Cameroon lions in the Central African lion biogeogrpahical group.   Jts1882 | talk  10:53, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Genetically, yes, though, apart from what was mentioned above, another link between the Cameroon lion and West Africa is that P. l. kamptzi was considered by some authors to be synonymous with P. l. senegalensis, as indicated by that map, which is why I used the name "Senegal lion" to generally refer to the population of 'Leonic' lions (P. l. leo) in Western and Central Africa, unlike the 'Melanochaitan' lions (P. l. melanochaita) in parts of Central Africa that are adjacent to countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, such as the Katanga lion (P. l. bleyenberghi). Leo1pard (talk) 05:45, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

On second thought, it is probably better to redirect Cameroon lion and Panthera leo kamptzi to Central African lion, due to its genetic makeup, but keep the information about it here, due to its relevance. Leo1pard (talk) 16:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

References

Page views

Leo1pard (talk) 16:16, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Why the Mauritanian lion in Diawling National Park would have been a Senegal lion, not a Barbary lion

See this. Leo1pard (talk) 04:17, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

See also

As per WP:SEEALSO, you're not supposed to have links in the section "See also", if they are present above. Also, there is no need to put [[]] around self-links. Leo1pard (talk) 04:48, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment

Please see/contribute to discussion at Talk:Lion#Request_for_comment:_How_many_subpages? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:26, 14 October 2018 (UTC)