https://www.yahoo.com/news/tall-tale-study-reveals-giraffes-four-species-not-194024390.html
Interesting article on the split of the Giraffe. Nice to add new species without going anywhere:-)
Andrew
Giraffe is now four species
Related Articles
-
New Trip Report: South Africa
Here’s Richard Webb/Wildwing’s latest report from South Africa. South Africa, 2017: Richard Webb, 12 days & 55 species including...
-
New trip report: Ethiopia
Great new report from Remco Hofland now on mammalwatching.com. Ethiopia 2015: 3 weeks & 54 species including Lion, Aardwolf,...
-
Saharan Cheetah photographed in Algeria (2020)
After more than a decade since the last sighting, the Saharan Cheetah was observed again in Ahaggar, southern of...
-
Kgalagadi Bat ID Needed
Hi everyone! On a recent trip to the Kgalagadi we found this bat. Can anyone help me to ID...
-
Mammals in the News
Here are a couple of fun videos to start the new year: some spectacular Humpback feeding behaviour and some...
-
I Just Offset (some of) My Greenhouse Gas Emissions
I spent Friday afternoon at a meeting on Planetary Health. It was interesting. But mainly terrifying. As we all know...
-
New Trip List – South Africa (and Botswana)
South Africa and Botswana, 2012: Juan Luis Ortega Herranz, 2 weeks and 54 species including Brown Hyena, Caracal, Honey...
-
New Book Review: Mammals of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia
So this is exciting. Trevor Jenner has just filled a gaping hole in the mammal fieldguide landscape, with his...
This is not the first such paper, and it has the same problem as all previous ones: not all subspecies have been sampled. I don’t know why they didn’t sample them all; the missing subspecies are available in captivity. It’s been clear for decades that the 3 subspecies present in Kenya behave like full species; I also suspect that the extreme difference between Maasai and reticulated giraffes is due to character displacement. So it is still unclear how many species are there, and how many subspecies. I think it’s pretty safe to split giraffes into four species at this point, but it remains to be seen if there’s more.
for others, the paper is here: http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30787-4
It clearly says “Our nuclear dataset includes all currently recognized giraffe subspecies… and, importantly, the elusive Nubian giraffe (Giraffa c. camelopardalis).”
Since my previous comments have disappeared, here’s a summary.
1. Sorry, I first looked at a wrong paper. The new one provides sufficient evidence for a 4-way split. I already updated my checklist 🙂
2. But I don’t think they provide sufficient evidence for lumping of some subspecies, and I find the idea of “killing” subspecies that are clearly separate morphologically based on genetic data to be fundamentally flawed and dangerous.