It has been understood for a long time that female lions tend to stay close to the pride in which they were born, while males travel great distances to find new prides. Scientists call this type of analysis, comparing data from the same space at different times, a spatiotemporal study. Curry used DNA extracted from bones, teeth and hides of 143 lions that lived between 1880-1949 to create a historical population data set.īoth population data sets cover the same geographical range from India to Southern Africa where lions are found. Many of those lion remains still reside perfectly preserved in collections around the world. Fortunately, scientists have a way to turn back time. The historical populations, against which they wanted to compare the modern lion DNA, provided more of a challenge. Curry pulled together DNA data from three previously published studies on lions that lived between 1990-2012. There have been several studies on modern lions, so gathering data for the modern populations was straightforward. But that's not the take-home lesson unfortunately, that's not the story we can tell.Ĭurry and Derr started their study with one overarching question: Has the genetic structure of lion populations changed over the last 100 years? "I really wanted to be able to tell everyone that the management we've been doing for the last 100 years is perfect and to keep doing what we've been doing and everything will be fine. "I was surprised at what we found - surprised and disappointed, because it's not what I wanted to see," Derr said. The research was published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution. This fragmentation could ultimately have a long-term impact on the genetic health of the iconic species. By comparing the DNA of lions today to lions from 100 years ago, they found that there is clear genetic evidence of recent population fragmentation, which is when groups of a species are isolated from each other.
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