Panthera leo melanochaita is the name the IUCN Cat Specialist Group used in 2017 for the southern lineage of lions, those of southern and eastern Africa.[1] The name was first given to the lions of the Cape of Good Hope.[1]
Names and classification
The name was published in 1842 for the lions of the Cape of Good Hope, and no type specimen was designated.[1] Some databases give a different author, C. E. H. Smith, 1858.[2][3] The 2017 checklist uses the name for all lions of southern and eastern Africa, which also includes the extinct Cape Lion.[1][4] Several older names for lions in this area, such as the Masai, Transvaal and Katanga lions, are among the 11 names in the 2005 list but not in the 2017 checklist.[1]
Range
The IUCN’s 2025 assessment lists P. l. melanochaita as Vulnerable.[5] Lions are declining across Africa except in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where numbers are stable or growing, partly in small fenced reserves.[6] Tanzania has the largest national population.[5]
Classification evidence
Studies of skull shape and of DNA both find a clear split between the lions of southern and eastern Africa and those of the rest of the range.[1][7] The two lineages meet somewhere in Ethiopia.[1] One study found five DNA groups across the species. Two of them overlap in southern Africa, which the checklist says makes naming them as separate subspecies inappropriate.[1][8]
Sources
- Kitchener et al. 2017, A revised taxonomy of the Felidae, IUCN Cat Specialist Group
- GBIF backbone, Panthera leo
- ITIS, Panthera leo
- Cape lion skulls, Scientific Reports 2024
- Nicholson et al. 2025, IUCN Red List assessment of Panthera leo
- Bauer et al. 2015, PNAS, “Lion populations are declining rapidly across Africa”
- Dubach et al. 2013, Conservation Genetics 14: 741–755
- Barnett et al. 2014, BMC Evolutionary Biology 14: 70