STRUCTURE OF AFRICAN ELEPHANT POPULATIONS

The structure oi elephant populations from east and south Africa has b een analyzed by Georgiadis et al. (1994) on the basis of restriction s ite variation of mitochondrial DNA. They used F statistics based on id entity by descent in tests for subdivision and reached the conclusion that there was a significant differentiation al the continental level, but that ''populations were not significantly subdivided at the regio nal levels.'' The data were reanalyzed by Monte-Carlo permutation test s where population subdivision was tested by using F statistics based on partitioning the total haplotype diversity among populations. This resulted in identical conclusions at the continental level, but reveal ed in addition a significant subdivision at the regional level indicat ing haplotype frequency differences among the populations.