Hippotragus niger (Harris 1838)

[Hippotragus] niger (Harris 1838), Athenaeum, 535: 71.

Type Locality: "The great mountain range in the county of Mataveld", and "On the northern side of the Cashan range of mountiains, about a degree and a half south of the tropic of Capricorn", since specified as South Africa, North West Prov., Krugersdorp and Rustenburg, Magaliesberg (Grubb, 1999).

Vernacular Names: Sable Antelope.

Subspecies::

Subspecies Hippotragus niger subsp. niger Harris 1838

Subspecies Hippotragus niger subsp. anselli Groves 1983

Subspecies Hippotragus niger subsp. roosevelti Heller 1910

Subspecies Hippotragus niger subsp. variani Thomas 1916

Distribution: Savanna woodland in Africa; giant sable (variani) in C Angola (between Cuanza and Loando Rs.); other subspecies in E Angola, N Botswana, S Dem. Rep. Congo, SE Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, NE Namibia (Caprivi Strip), NE South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Conservation: CITES – Appendix I as H. niger variani; U.S. ESA – Endangered as H. n. variani; IUCN – Critically Endangered as H. n. variani, otherwise Lower Risk (cd).

Discussion: Includes variani; see Ansell (1972:47). Original publication usually assumed to be Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1838:2 (publ. July, 1838), but McAllan and Bruce (1989) showed that an earlier publication is The Athenaeum (publ. 27 Jan., 1838). Subspecific synonymy follows Ansell (1972:47). In phylogeographic studies, Matthee and Robinson (1999) distinguishsed niger, kirkii and variani from " roosevelti ", and Pitra et al. (2002) recognised clade I (" roosevelti " of Matthee and Robinson, in W Tanzania and merged with clade II), "pure" clade II ( niger including kirkii) and clade III (roosevelti). Cotterill (2003 a) treated anselli (mtDNA not studied) as specifically distinct from niger .