Alumni Pages, Division of Biological Sciences, UC San Diego

Alumna Profile

Lori Eggert, BS, 1992; PhD, 2001

DNA Evidence Suggests Three Types of Elephants Roam Africa

UCSD alumna Dr. Lori Eggert received both her BS in biology (1992) and her PhD in Ecology, Behavior and Evolution (2001) from UCSD. Her PhD work focused on the evolution and conservation of the African forest elephant. Eggert is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Robert Fleischer at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Besides her work with African elephants, she is also researching avian malaria in Hawaiian forest birds. Visit Eggert’s website at: http://www.mnh.si.edu/GeneticsLab/StaffPage/EggartL/EggertL.html.

Using DNA extracted from the dung of wild elephants in Africa, biologists from UCSD have determined that three different types of elephants exist on the African continent. Their discovery, detailed in a paper published in the October 7, 2002 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series B, affirms the existence of the well-known savanna elephant and the recently recognized forest elephant of central Africa. But it also suggests that the elephants of west Africa, which live in both the forest and savanna, represent a third, genetically distinct population that has been diverging from the other two groups for some two million years. Their discovery could, if confirmed by additional genetic evidence, split the African group into three distinct species or subspecies.

“This discovery is important, because the west African elephants are threatened with extinction as a result of human activities,” says David S. Woodruff, a professor of biology and chair of the Ecology, Behavior and Evolution Section of UCSD’s Division of Biological Sciences. “If these findings are confirmed, zoologists and conservation managers will need to recognize three different species of African elephants, all of which need protection because their numbers are declining.”

“Knowing that forest elephants are very different genetically from savanna elephants means that overpopulation in some southern African savanna parks should not lead to a relaxation of the protection for elephants elsewhere, especially in the forests,” says Lori S. Eggert, the first author of the paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. “These populations are not exchangeable, either ecologically or genetically.”

While a doctoral student in Woodruff’s lab, Eggert with lab research assistant Caylor A. Rasner traveled to Africa to collect dung samples. The Woodruff lab specializes in the development of non-invasive techniques to collect and assess genetic information from dangerous or difficult to observe wildlife populations. By genotyping dung recovered from Global Positioning Satellite-guided transects in the forest, the researchers were able to establish the numbers and sexes of the 212 elephants remaining in the Kakum National Park, Ghana. This demonstration that elephants can be counted without ever seeing them provides wildlife managers with a power new tool to save the highly endangered western elephant.

The results of their study have widespread implications for the management of all three types of wild African elephants. Although the ivory trade ban has slowed the slaughter of elephants, some countries have appealed for permission to resume the harvest. “If current trends of forest conversion and human-elephant competition for necessities like habitat and water continue,” asserts Eggert, “all elephants other than those in the highly managed protected areas of southern Africa will continue to be endangered. Even a limited resumption of the ivory trade could lead to increased hunting of forest elephants for ivory. Thus, while all three genetically distinct types of elephants are threatened, those in west Africa are now highly endangered.”

For the full story, visit: http://www.biology.ucsd.edu/news/article_091202.html.