Status of the so-called African pygmy elephant (Loxodonta pumilio (NOACK 1906)): phylogeny of cytochrome b and mitochondrial control region sequences.

Among the African elephants, it has been unanimously acknowledged that the forest elephants (cyclotis form) are peculiar, so that they have been elevated to the specific rank. The development of molecular analyses of extant Loxodonta has only focused on two forms yet: the savannah form (africana) and the forest form (cyclotis), disregarding the so-called pygmy elephants (pumilio or fransseni) the systematic status of which has been debated since their discovery. Therefore, we have sampled nine dwarfed-labelled specimens in collection and eight specimens of typical forest elephants that we compared to three savannah elephants and two Asian elephants.