Phacochoerus aethiopicus ssp. aethiopicus (Cape Warthog)

[sebbe67]

Phacochoerus aethiopicus ssp. aethiopicus

The population of Phacochoerus aethiopicus aethiopicus declined throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of overhunting and persecution. An outbreak of rinderpest in 1900 is thought to have pushed the remaining population to extinction.

[another specialist]

www.iucnredlist.org/search/details.php?species=16790

[another specialist]

Two species of warthogs (Phacochoerus), differing by the number of functional incisors, were described in the Holocene fossil record: the common warthog (P. africanus), widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, and the Cape, or desert warthog (P. aethiopicus), which was considered extinct since 1896, but was recently rediscovered in East Africa by morphological analyses. Mitochondrial and single-copy nuclear DNA sequences show that common and desert warthogs belong to two deeply divergent monophyletic lineages, that might have originated in the last part of the Pliocene. The finding of two genetically divergent extant species of warthogs highlights the importance of molecular methods applied to the knowledge and conservation of biodiversity in Africa, to uncover the tempo and mode of its species evolution.

www.ingentaconnect.com/content/urban/161/2002/00000067/00000002/art00013

[another specialist]

Cape and Somali Warthogs

(Phacochoerus aethiopicus)



For much of the last century and in this century also, at least among paleontologists, two species of warthog have been recognized. The Cape warthog was distinguished principally by its lack of functional incisors. The common warthog has two incisors in the upper jaw and usually six in the lower jaw. One or more may be lost, but their former presence can be identified in cleaned skulls from traces of the alveoli. Other distinguishing features of Cape warthog skulls and teeth have also been noted in the literature, but have hardly ever been reviewed and evaluated in a systematic manner. The natural distribution of the Cape warthog was never properly identified and few specimens ever became available, none after the mid-nineteenth century. The specific name of the Cape warthog is the earliest one of the genus, so when all warthogs were considered to be one species, the characteristics of the better-known common warthog became associated with the name of the less well-known species. It became the accepted view among zoologists that the Cape warthog was no more than an extinct geographic representative of the common warthog. Paleontologists on the other hand have recognized two kinds of warthog in fossil material from South Africa and have treated P. aethiopicus and P. africanus as two different species, believing that the former is now extinct (see Ewer, 1957 for an important review).



In 1909, Lönnberg noted that two male warthog skulls obtained in Somalia also lacked incisors. He created a new species, P. delamerei, on the basis of these specimens and noted other similarities with P. aethiopicus, though he was not convinced that these two taxa were immediately related to each other. Nevertheless, warthogs with a specialized incisor-less morphology and other characters were now known from South Africa and East Africa. Roosevelt & Heller (1922) noticed this discontinuous distribution between north-east and south Africa - between Somali Arid and Southwest Arid Zones - which recalls the distribution of other animals of dry environments such as the dikdik or oryx. In the interim, however, Lydekker (1915) had grouped all warthogs into one species, P. aethiopicus - the specific name properly associated with the Cape warthog. Since then, few neontologists have recognized the important divisions within the genus and there appear to be no acknowledgements in the literature of Roosevelt & Heller's (1922) perceptive observations nor of the anatomical features linking delamerei and aethiopicus which Lönnberg (1909) and Heller (1914) identified.



My own studies not only confirm differences between the common warthog and the Cape species, but that the Somali warthog and the Cape warthog are so alike that they should be regarded as conspecific. The principle features of the Cape/Somali warthog, P. aethiopicus, in comparison to the common warthog, P. africanus, are:



- the skull is relatively small, but proportionately shorter and broader;

- the front part of the zygomatic arch is thickened by internal sinuses and swollen into a spherical hollow knob just in front of the jugal-squamosal suture (in the common warthog, the zygomatic arch may be robust but it is never quite so thickened and there is no formation of a knob);

- there is never any trace of upper incisors, even in relatively young individuals, and the lower incisors, even if present, are rudimentary and non-functional (whereas the common warthog always has two upper incisors, though these may be lost in very old animals, and usually six, functional lower incisors in the adult dentition, of normal suine form);

- in the Cape warthog (but not yet confirmed in the Somali form), the large third molars are very different from those of the common species in that no roots have been formed by the time all the enamel columns have come into wear, so that the columns are able to continue growing and extend the life of the tooth; and

- in the common warthog the skull roof behind the internal nares is marked by two deep and distinct 'sphenoidal pits', not found in any other African suid, while in the Cape/Somali species, these pits have expanded enormously, disappearing as distinct entities, so as to contribute to two vaults between the pterygoids, separated by a deep vomerine ridge.



Other differences have been described, but their validity may need further investigation. However, the characters of the incisors, cheek teeth, zygoma and sphenoid region are trenchant, discrete and functionally quite independent. There is no indication of intermediate states and no likelihood that the morphological differences merely indicate intra-population variation, particularly as one of the species is itself discontinuously distributed. One could not have better morphological evidence for the existence of two species. Furthermore they may even be sympatric in some places. The two subspecies of 'desert' warthogs may be described as follows:



Cape Warthog, Phacochoerus aethiopicus aethiopicus (extinct)



Cape warthog specimens in museums lack locality records but specimens subsequently identified as belonging to this species were obtained by Sparrman between the Sondags and Boesmans rivers, eastern Cape Province, and by Burchell on the upper Orange River, south of Hopetown, again in the eastern Cape. The full extent of the Cape warthog's former distribution remains unknown. Possibly it was restricted to the Karoo. There is no mention of this subspecies being obtained after about 1860.



Somali or Desert Warthog, Phacochoerus aethiopicus delamerei



This geographic representative of the Cape warthog is recorded from Somalia, both in the north and in Jubaland in the south, and from northern Kenya. Both this species and the common Warthog have been obtained in northern Somalia, where locality records for the common species form an enclave in the vicinity of Berbera, with sparse records of Somali warthog to the west, east and south. The two species may be parapatric or even partly sympatric and ecologically segregated in northern Somalia, but this has yet to be confirmed. Their relative geographical disposition in Kenya (or eastern Ethiopia) cannot be assessed at all in the absence of adequate specimens or information.



Somali warthog from Kenya and Jubaland are larger than those from northern Somalia and it may be necessary to describe them as a separate subspecies. Not enough specimens are available, however, to determine whether this should be done.

www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/pphsg/APchap4-1.htm

Alot of info on lots of different pigs full species and subspecies too.....

[another specialist]

I do have a photo of this species skeleton specimen - if interested i could send to peter to post on website or forum....

[sebbe67]

yes it would be nice if you could do that

[another specialist]

I'll find it ready for tomorrow and send to peter to upload to site- if thats ok peter?

[Peter]

Oh yes, that is always welcome. I can make a information page from it for the website. The photo will than be also available on the internet.

Please do give all the information you have on the specimen on the photo. Do you have made it yourself? Than of course you name will be placed with it. And more if necessary.

[another specialist]

Peter said:

Oh yes, that is always welcome. I can make a information page from it for the website. The photo will than be also available on the internet.

Please do give all the information you have on the specimen on the photo. Do you have made it yourself? Than of course you name will be placed with it. And more if necessary.

sent image to you may be of use?

Some info
www.gisbau.uniroma1.it/data/amd/amd053/amd053.pdf
www.gisbau.uniroma1.it/amd/amd053.html
#nosmileys

[Peter]

Yes it is!

But where did you get the image from? Did you made it yourself? And where is it taken which museum for example?

[another specialist]

sent all info and whole article in the second e-mail for you....

[Peter]

The image and pic of the original article:"

[another specialist]

Great to see it live instead of being in my filing lol

[sebbe67]

pic here

planet-mammiferes.org

[Melanie]

pic found by sebbe

planet-mammiferes.org/Photos/Ongule/SuidTay/PhacAAe2.jpg

sebbe67 said:

pic here

planet-mammiferes.org

[another specialist]

Hopes that the 'extinct' Cape form, P. a. aethiopicus, may survive in the far northern Cape Province have proved groundless as the warthogs in this area have functional incisors.



The Cape and Somali (or Desert) Warthog

(P. aethiopicus)

A live warthog sent to Holland from the Cape Colony by Governor Tulbagh in 1765 was the first such animal to be described (Sclater, 1900). Although warthogs became largely extinct in the Cape, probably soon after the massive rinderpest epizootic at the end of the nineteenth century, specimens collected from this region had no functional incisors and were characterized by a number of other distinctive dental and cranial features (Grubb, this vol., Section 4.1). In his review of the taxonomy of the African suids, the latter author suggests that the warthogs of Somalia are virtually indistinguishable from the extinct Cape form and advocates that the Somali population should be recognized as an isolated form of this species, both on the basis of its dental and skull characteristics and reported sympatry with P. africanus in northern Somalia. Accordingly, he advocates that the widely separated southern (or Cape) and northern (or Somali) warthog variants are referred to as P. a. aethiopicus and P. a. delamerei respectively. The external appearance, behavior and ecology of the Somali animals are almost unknown, though Fagotto (1985) reported that warthogs were the most widespread and abundant large mammals, and that groups (of up to 10-15 individuals) were still present throughout most of Somalia, even in very dry bushlands.


Former and Present Distribution

Warthogs inhabit open and wooded savannas, grass-steppe and semi-deserts from Mauritania and Ethiopia in the north to Namibia and Natal in the south. The two species have allopatric ranges, as follows:



Phacochoerus aethiopicus has a discontinuous range between north-east and extreme south Africa, though it is evidently extinct in the latter region where it formerly occurred in the Cape Province and apparently in Orange Free State. The species is otherwise confined to a small area of north-east Africa from Kenya north of the Guaso Nyiro River throughout Somalia, probably extending into the Ogaden of extreme south-east Ethiopia. It is likely that the range of this species impinges on that of P. africanus in the Berbera region of north Somalia and, possibly, north-eastern Kenya and south-eastern Ethiopia, but it is not known whether true sympatry or intergradation between these populations occurs in these areas (Grubb, this vol.).



Reliable records of the historical distribution of warthogs in the Cape Province are sparse (du Plessis, 1969; Skead, 1980, 1987), but they were reported as far south as the Sundays River near present-day Port Elizabeth (Sparrman, 1789). Further inland, warthogs were recorded from the foot of the Zuurberg hills (Barrow, 1801) and in the Beaufort West district of the Karroo (Lichtenstein, 1815). Rookmaker (1989) provided further records of warthogs in south-central Cape Province, based on archives and literature up till 1790. Their former range also extended across the Orange River into the northern Cape and Orange Free State, where they were recorded from the sour-grass plains (Cumming, 1851) and along the Riet River (Bowker, cited in Mitford-Barberton, 1970), both localities south-west of present-day Blomfontein; and near the Rhenoster River, a tributary of the Vaal River, in the northwestern Orange Free State (Baines, cited in Kennedy, 1964). However, their occurrence in this region, where winter temperatures may fall to freezing, clearly depended on the availability of vleis (marshy depressions) and riverine foraging sites, as well as night-time shelter in aardvark burrows, rock crevices and reedbeds, but some localities would have been too cold. Moreover, relatively lush riparian corridors along seasonal watercourses enable warthogs to penetrate or reside in arid regions, as evinced by recent sightings of these animals in reedbeds at the mouth of the Ugab River in Namibia (B. Loutit, pers. comm.).



Warthog numbers in the Orange Free State and much of the Cape Province had probably already been substantially reduced by uncontrolled hunting when the infamous rinderpest epizootic that began in the horn of Africa in 1889 reached the Cape in 1896 (Mack, 1970). Consequent mortality of cattle and game across the continent was catastrophic (Plowright, 1982). Warthogs are highly susceptible to rinderpest and the epizootic was so virulent in southern Africa that it burned itself out completely (Scott, 1981). Because the reproductive potential of warthogs is high, their populations can recover quickly even after being decimated, but documentary evidence of the post-rinderpest situation vis-…-vis warthogs in the Orange Free State and Cape Province is lacking. Uncontrolled hunting and encroaching settlements may have eliminated warthog survivors even before the rinderpest, especially where habitats were marginal, and salient habitat factors may have changed. Whatever the causes, warthogs became extinct in the Orange Free State and over most of their former range in the Cape.



Unfortunately, hopes that the warthogs surviving in the far northern Cape (Meester et al., 1986; Skinner and Smithers, 1991), including the Molopo River on the Cape side of the Botswana border (P. Novellie, pers. comm.) and the Alletasrust area of the Vryburg district (G. Fletcher, pers. comm.), may be living representatives of this species have also proved groundless as these animals have fully functional incisors like the P. africanus stock. Moreover, there is no evidence that the far northern Cape warthogs derive from sources other than the ancestral populations that would have had a much wider historical distribution southwards and into the Transvaal and Botswana.

More of the above is found here

www.iucn.org/themes/ssc/sgs/pphsg/APchap4-2.htm

[sebbe67]

[another specialist]

sebbe67 was there a key or description to go with this image? so that everyone here knows which specimen is?

[another specialist]

May 20, 2005 14:55:50 GMT Peter said:

The image and pic of the original article:"

Peter do you still have this images saved some where?

[another specialist]

Jul 29, 2005 22:19:47 GMT Melanie said:

pic found by sebbe

planet-mammiferes.org/Photos/Ongule/SuidTay/PhacAAe2.jpg

sebbe67 said:

pic here

planet-mammiferes.org