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| Harnessed bushbuck | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Male | |
 | |
| Female | |
Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Artiodactyla |
| Family: | Bovidae |
| Subfamily: | Bovinae |
| Genus: | Tragelaphus |
| Species: | T. scriptus |
| Binomial name | |
| Tragelaphus scriptus (Pallas, 1766) | |
Theharnessed bushbuck (Tragelaphus scriptus) ornorthern bushbuck, is a medium-sizedantelope, widespread insub-Saharan-Africa. The harnessed bushbuck species has been separated from theCape bushbuck, a southern and eastern species.[1][2][3]
| Phylogenetic relationships of the mountain nyala from combined analysis of all molecular data (Willows-Munro et.al. 2005) |
In a 2007 study, 19 genetically-based groupings were found, some of which do not correspond to previously described subspecies; eight of these were grouped under the nominate taxon. Former subspecies included as synonyms to the nominate taxon arephaleratus,bor anddodingae.[4]
Hassanin et al. (2018)[3] found an mtDNA/nuclear DNA discordance betweenscriptus andsylvaticus clades. Their phylogenetic analyses showed that thescriptus (northern) lineage is a sister-group ofsylvaticus (southern) lineage in the nuclear tree, whereas it has nyala (Tragelaphus angasii) haplotypes in the mitochondrial tree. They also found different karyotypes (chromosome numbers and arrangements), with those ofscriptus deriving from the nyala. They concluded thatscriptus (but notsylvaticus) had hybridized with an "extinct species closely related toT. angasii" in ancient times; and that "the division into two bushbuck species is supported by the analyses of nuclear markers and by the karyotype...".
As the first of the bushbucks to be described by Pallas in 1766 asAntilope scripta from Senegal, it retains the original species name for the bushbuck, corrected for gender.
Bushbucks in general are smaller are than other tragelaphines, with a mainly red or yellow-brown ground color. According to Moodleyet al., the males of the West African population are more often striped than those in East or Southern Africa, although bushbucks with striping occur throughout the range.
The nominate taxon occurs in Senegal,Gambia,Guinea,Sierra Leone,Ghana and in the Niger Basin inNigeria as far east as the Cross River, south of the Bamenda Highlands throughCameroon,Chad, the Central African Republic to theNile inSouth Sudan and northernUganda, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo to northernAngola.[4]
It is common across its broad geographic distribution and is found in wooded savannas, forest-savanna mosaics, rainforests, in montane forests and semi-arid zones. It does not occur in the deep rainforests of the centralCongo Basin.