"I love my work, sihib."
Posted on 09/26/2002 11:07:30 AM PDT by Junior
Africa may harbor three species of elephant instead of just two, suggests a study based on DNA extracted from dung.
If that is confirmed, it means that roughly 12,000 elephants living in western Africa are a distinct and endangered species, due to their small scattered populations, researcher Lori Eggert said.
It will take more analysis to determine whether the western elephants really represent a third species, said Eggert, a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Institution ( news - web sites) in Washington.
"We need to err on the side of caution," she said, because of the implications for conservation.
She is lead author of the new study, based on work she did while at the University of California, San Diego. It was published online Sept. 12 by Proceedings B, a journal of the London-based Royal Society.
Just last year, other researchers presented DNA evidence from elsewhere in the continent that African elephants living in forests are a separate species from those found on the savannah. The western African elephants analyzed in the new work live in both types of habitat.
To get DNA for the new study, Eggert sampled dung from western elephants in Ghana, the Ivory Coast and Mali, as well as from elephants in Cameroon.
Genetic material was then extracted from intestinal cells found in the dung. Analysis of that DNA was then compared to DNA results from elephants elsewhere in Africa.
The results suggest the western elephants have been isolated from the other elephants for some 2.4 million years, Eggert said.
John Hart, a senior conservation zoologist with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, said the estimate of 12,000 western elephants may be optimistic. In any case, he said, "they're still disappearing. The pressure on these remnant populations has not ended."
The creatures are being poached, and as they are forced into small areas they come in conflict with local people, which raises support for poaching, he said.
Eggert's work and similar research should help conservationists by pointing out which elephant populations represent important genetic lineages that should have priority for conservation, he said. Such work can also reveal links between currently isolated populations so they can be logically grouped together in management plans, he said.
One author of last year's paper suggesting two elephant species in Africa called the new work intriguing. The author, Alfred Roca of the National Cancer Institute ( news - web sites), also agreed that more work is needed before drawing any conclusions about whether the western elephants are a third species.
"West Africa has the most highly endangered elephant populations in Africa, and they share habitats that are increasingly fragmented and isolated with a host of critically endangered species," Roca said in an e-mail message. "This study highlights the urgent need for conservation measures on their behalf."
Would a Bull elephant from one group consider it "work"
to test the theory with a female from the other group?
It's called "Rino Governmentus"
"I love my work, sihib."
Not unusual for someone of her advanced age. Happens to many of us, the good, the bad, AND the ugly.
well... in her case two outta three ain't bad, I reckon.
Gore is a has been and deserves to be ridiculed by the Dems...........wait.....what were we talking about?
They come pre-moistened by the expert in dung-licking. It's a job for which he is eminently qualified.
Keep dividing everything that way, and everything will be endangered.
Reminds me of that group complaining during the fires in Oregon that a 'dozer drove through a meadow where three different plants lived together. The plants themselves were not endangered, but this was the only place all three lived together, so it was a sensitive area.
Sigh...
Unfortunately for your hypothesis, humans are far more closely related to one another than elephants, or even chimpanzees. Evidently, there was a "genetic bottleneck" for the human species sometime in the last 100,000 years which reduced the entire human population to a few thousand individuals.
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