Bottom-up approach best for lion conservation
Lion populations once spread as far east as India
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Friday, 07, Nov 2008 03:01
Preserving declining lion populations is more important than prioritising larger-scale conservation efforts, an international team of researchers says today.
Research published in the PLOS Genetics journal today refutes the hypothesis that African lions consist of a single randomly breeding population.
Scientists examining the species' genetic history established that there is no evidence of substantial genetic exchange between subpopulations.
They studied lion evolutionary history by taking information from both host and virus genetic information contained in infectious diseases like the lion-specific feline immunodeficiency virus.
They claim this holds implications for the way conservation experts approach the species.
"Employing a bottom-up perspective that prioritises populations, rather than large-scale units (eg all African lions), might preserve and maintain lion diversity and evolutionary processes most efficiently," the article suggests.
The area of the world where lions have been able to live has contracted significantly in its history.
At their greatest range lions stretched all round the African coast and into Greece and India through the Sinai peninsula bridge into the Middle East. Now they are confined to pockets in sub-Saharan Africa.