RECENT claims that the African elephant is actually two species have been contradicted.
Previous research suggested that forest and savannah populations do not interbreed and so should be considered as separate species. But now Lori Eggert and her colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, have found that the situation is more complicated.
They extracted DNA from dung samples collected in West Africa and also looked at the sequences of previously collected DNA from East and Southern Africa. Comparing DNA from these different populations suggested five separate lineages, not two, the team will report in a future issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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But Eggert says it is too early to decide the number of species of African elephants. 鈥淭his leaves it wide open,鈥� she says.