African elephants: 2 for 1 deal

Savanna and forest elephants in Africa are two distinct species, according to new genetic data, settling a long-standing controversy

Written byJef Akst

| 2 min read

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African savanna elephants weigh nearly twice as much as their forest counterparts, yet many have considered them merely different populations of the same species. But new genetic evidence finally puts the debate to rest: The two groups are indeed distinct species that diverged between 2.6 and 5.6 million years ago.

African savanna elephant
Image: Wikimedia commons, nickandmel2006

"These two African groups of elephants are really deeply diverged," said population geneticist linkurl:David Reich;http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/faculty/reich of Harvard Medical School. "There's really two very distinct species of elephants in Africa. The paper settles that controversy, I think."Reich and his colleagues did targeted genome sequencing for both groups of African elephants, as well as the Asian elephant and two extinct species -- the wooly mammoth and the mastodon. The results demonstrated that not only are the savanna and forest elephants in Africa two species, they are as distinct from each other as the Asian elephant is from the woolly mammoth , which are classified in different genera.

African forest elephant
Image: Wikimedia commons, Thomas Breuer

While African elephants have been conserved as one species for more than half a century, these findings suggest that the forest and savanna elephants should be treated as two separate species with regard to conservation efforts, said coauthor linkurl:Alfred Roca,;http://connections.ideals.illinois.edu/people/75-Alfred_Roca assistant professor in the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois. "There are fewer forest elephants," he told The Scientist in an email -- "the savanna elephant population size is probably 3 or 4 times larger than that of the forest elephant." Plus, he noted, the habitat of the forest elephant is not well protected. More than 90 percent of the original forests in West Africa have been cut down, and the forests of Central Africa are falling victim to the same fate."The poster-child of many of the elephant conservation campaigns is the savanna/plains elephant," Reich added, "but our data make it clear that it would be an equally profound loss to biology if the forest elephant went extinct."N. Rohland, et al., "Genomic DNA sequences from mastodon and woolly mammoth reveal deep speciation of forest and savanna elephants," PLoS Biology, 8:e1000564, 2010.
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Meet the Author

Jef Akst

Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.

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