Groups of chimpanzees within central Africa are more different genetically than humans living on different continents, a study has found.
The Oxford University-led study published in the journal PLoS Genetics suggests that genomics can provide a valuable new tool for use in chimpanzee conservation. It has the potential to identify the population of origin of an individual chimpanzee or the provenance of a sample of bush meat, a university of Oxford release said. Common chimpanzees in equatorial Africa have long been recognised as falling into three distinct populations or sub-species: western, central and eastern chimpanzees. A fourth group, the Cameroonian chimpanzee, has been proposed to live in southern Nigeria and western Cameroon, but there has been considerable controversy as to whether it constitutes a distinct group.
Oxford University researchers, along with scientists from the University of Cambridge, the Broad Institute, the Centre Pasteur du Cameroun and the Biomedical Primate Research Centre, examined DNA from 54 chimpanzees. They compared the DNA at 818 positions across the genome that varied between individuals.
Their analysis showed that Cameroonian chimpanzees are distinct from the other, well-established groups. And previous conclusions that Cameroonian and western chimpanzees are most closely related were shown to be untrue. Instead, the closest relationships to Cameroonian chimpanzees are with nearby central chimpanzees, the release added.