Biodiversity Data Journal :
Short Communication
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Corresponding author: Tsyon Asfaw (tsyonasfaw@gmail.com)
Academic editor: Chelmala Srinivasulu
Received: 26 Aug 2022 | Accepted: 23 Nov 2022 | Published: 13 Dec 2022
© 2022 Tsyon Asfaw, Mihret Ewnetu, Abebayehu Moges, Assegid Gebre, Fikirte Gebresenbet, Hans Bauer
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Asfaw T, Ewnetu M, Moges A, Gebre A, Gebresenbet F, Bauer H (2022) First record of White-eared Kob (Kobus kob leucotis) in Omo National Park, Ethiopia (Artiodactyla, Bovidae) . Biodiversity Data Journal 10: e94114. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.10.e94114
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White-eared Kob, Kobus kob leucotis, Lichtenstein & Peters, 1853, is known to occur in the Gambela-Boma landscape in western Ethiopia and South Sudan. They live in herds and are generally found near water, in such places as plains, woodlands, swamps, and flood plains. We deployed 36 camera traps in Omo National Park and one of them took two images of a White-eared Kob. This is the first documentation from Omo National Park and showing that its range extends further to Omo than previously known and, therefore, the entire area (Gambella to Omo) can be considered as a range extension.
range extension, White-eared Kob, first record, Omo National Park
Kobus kob is a medium-sized antelope. Females are smaller in size without horns and shaded with reddish or yellowish-ochre with white underside, face, ears and hocks, while males turn darker from rich cinnamon rufous or pale yellowish-brown with age. Males have large ridged horns that curve backwards, forwards and tip up forming an “S” shape. Three subspecies of kob have been described so far; the white-eared kob (K. k. leucotis), Ugandan kob (K. k. thomasi) and western kob (K. k. kob) following their geographical variation (
White-eared kob, Kobus kob leucotis, Lichtenstein & Peters, 1853, is known to occur between the Gambela-Boma landscape in Ethiopia and South Sudan (
From 08 May 2021 to 03 August 2021, we put 53 camera traps (36 succesfully retrieved) for 2572 camera-trap nights across Omo National Park (ONP) overlayed in a 25 km2 grid. The mean distance between camera-trap stations was 4.26 km (1.34 km SD) (Fig.
ONP is located in the lower Omo Valley in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region (SNNPR), Ethiopia and has an area of 4068 km2 (Fig.
Wildlife in ONP are threatened by different interacting threats including settlement, poaching, sugar cane processing industry inside Omo National Parks and a dam development project (
From the 2572 camera trap nights, we obtained 41 mammal species detections. All but one of these detections are of species that had already been recorded from ONP, including all five large carnivores of Africa. One of our cameras at 35.93084/5.84523 lat/lon captured a male white-eared kob (Fig.
The habitat between Boma-Gambella and in ONP is largely intact and we speculate that the Boma-Gambella landscape is where these photographed white-eared kob came from (
We are very thankful to Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority for giving us the research permit for the study; Zoo Leipzig, National Geographic Society, Panthera Kaplan Graduate Award and AFD-GDN Biodiversity Development Award for funding the fieldwork. We also thank GEF/UNDP, Prof. Julian Bayliss, scouts and the warden of ONP for their unlimited support during the fieldwork.
All authors delared that they have no conflict of interests.