A new study of free-ranging chimpanzees across Africa has revealed that males are more closely related than females within one community and that western African chimpanzees are less closely related than previously believed to those in eastern and central Africa. The findings were published in a recent issue of the weekly journal Science by UC Davis postdoctoral fellow Phillip Morin and his colleagues at UC San Diego. The paper describes the genetic analysis of chimpanzee hair samples and the implications for the conservation and management of captive and wild chimpanzee populations. The researchers spent one month collecting hair samples from the nighttime tree-top nests of the Kasakela social community in the Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Other researchers across the continent contributed chimpanzee hair samples for a genetic comparison that showed such a surprising difference among the subspecies that UCSD biologist and co-author David Woodruff believes the western African chimpanzees may warrant consideration as a separate species.