Post by Peter on Dec 31, 2011 9:27:43 GMT
I've had contact with F.P.D. (Woody) Cotterill about this subspecies, and want to share his information with you all as well:
"The only other source of information is my doctoral dissertation, which you may have already seen on my website - especially chapters 2 & 7. I am in Zambia until the new year so my datafiles are not accessible, but I will check collection dates of those specimens etc then. It is also worth checking Frank Ansell's discussion of Kobus robertsi (in his Puku paper 1974).
I doubt anyone knows when the last one vanished. The only people likely to have noted the population were colonial officers, perhaps those stationed at Kawambwa or Mansa (then Fort Roseberry). But all these people are now dead or very old! Ansell's seems to be the last word on all this.
The plot thickens in that the late Peter Grubb and I carried out some historical research on Lord Rothschild's archives (now in NHM) but it was not satisfactory. Our suspicions were not resolved that Rothschild might have redescribed smithemani! So the Wynne specimens and Tervuren ones too represent an undescribed taxon. My mtDNA sequences (including the "neotype") also did not resolve the situation with so few specimens and a major effort with museum tissue.
Another lead is the Colonel Blaine expedition led by J E Hughes (who wrote Eighteen years on Lake Bangweulu) but Hiughes does not mention anything about any visit north of Bangweulu to secure this lechwe. But it might be in Hughes journals which apparently survive in private hands. The NHM archives might hold any data from Blaine's trip, or of Wynne's. Noone has pursued these avenues!"
So indeed no exact extinction date. When I hear more from him, I will let you know!
"The only other source of information is my doctoral dissertation, which you may have already seen on my website - especially chapters 2 & 7. I am in Zambia until the new year so my datafiles are not accessible, but I will check collection dates of those specimens etc then. It is also worth checking Frank Ansell's discussion of Kobus robertsi (in his Puku paper 1974).
I doubt anyone knows when the last one vanished. The only people likely to have noted the population were colonial officers, perhaps those stationed at Kawambwa or Mansa (then Fort Roseberry). But all these people are now dead or very old! Ansell's seems to be the last word on all this.
The plot thickens in that the late Peter Grubb and I carried out some historical research on Lord Rothschild's archives (now in NHM) but it was not satisfactory. Our suspicions were not resolved that Rothschild might have redescribed smithemani! So the Wynne specimens and Tervuren ones too represent an undescribed taxon. My mtDNA sequences (including the "neotype") also did not resolve the situation with so few specimens and a major effort with museum tissue.
Another lead is the Colonel Blaine expedition led by J E Hughes (who wrote Eighteen years on Lake Bangweulu) but Hiughes does not mention anything about any visit north of Bangweulu to secure this lechwe. But it might be in Hughes journals which apparently survive in private hands. The NHM archives might hold any data from Blaine's trip, or of Wynne's. Noone has pursued these avenues!"
So indeed no exact extinction date. When I hear more from him, I will let you know!
